RACE - The Power of an Illusion . Go Deeper

EXPLORE 1790-1854

1790	Race categories on first census	The U.S. Constitution mandates that "an actual enumeration" be conducted every 10 years. From the beginning, race categories are included, although in 1790, who is Black or white is not as important as who is free or enslaved. The question of how to count slaves sparks an intense debate in Congress, leading to the infamous 3/5ths compromise to determine taxation and representation. At this time, Enlightenment thinkers have a view of common humanity. Many regard Africans as different from and inferior to the English, but the difference is seen as a product of environment rather than natural or inevitable.
1790	Naturalization reserved for whites	The 1790 Naturalization Act reserves naturalized citizenship for whites only. African Americans are not guaranteed citizenship until 1868, when the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution is ratified in the wake of Reconstruction. Groups of Native Americans become citizens through individual treaties or intermarriage and finally, through the 1924 Indian Citizenship Act. Asian immigrants are ineligible to citizenship until the 1954 McCarran-Walter Act removes all racial barriers to naturalization. Without citizenship, nonwhites are denied the right to vote, own property, bring suit, testify in court - all the basic protections and entitlements that white citizens take for granted.
1810	Indians take on racial idea	Increasingly lumped together as the enemy by encroaching settlers, some Indians begin to think of themselves as sharing a unified identity - or at least a common fate. Delaware, Miami, Sauk, Mesquakie, Potawatmi, and Kickapoo warriors join the Shawnee warrior Tecumseh and his brother Tenskwatawa (known as the Prophet) to forge a pan-Indian movement and drive white Americans off their lands. However, many tribes divide or refuse to join their army, and in October 1811, the alliance is attacked and defeated in the Battle of Tippecanoe. Tecumseh himself is later killed during the War of 1812. "Where today are the Pequot, Narraganset, Mohican, Pokanet and many other such powerful tribes? They have vanished before the avarice and oppression of the white man...The only way to stop this evil is for all the red men to unite and claim an equal and common right to the land." - Tecumseh
1824	Blood degree measures who is Indian	An early treaty with the Osage tribe introduces land allotment and federal Indian policy based on "blood" degree. These ideas are broadly applied during the 19th century, most notably by the Dawes Commission in its 1887 wholesale redistribution of Indian lands. Historically, membership in Indian tribes was based on acceptance of tribal language, customs, and authority, not "blood." Escaped slaves, whites and other Indians were able to join and be accepted as full members. Although land allotment policies end in the 1930s, the government continues to base eligibility for programs on blood quantum, leading most tribes to adopt blood degree requirements for membership by the late 20th century.
1830	Indians dispossessed of lands	Throughout the 19th century, American Indian lands are taken away and given to white settlers. The 1830 Indian Removal Act forcibly relocates thousands of Indians from east of the Mississippi River to Oklahoma. Many die en route. The 1862 Homestead Act encourages a flood of squatters to invade Indian lands in the midwest. Already suffering from decimation of the buffalo, nomadic Plains Indian tribes are forced to relocate to government reservations. The 1887 Dawes Act breaks up collectively owned Indian lands and redistributes it to individuals, allowing "surplus" land to be sold to whites. Lewis Cass, Secretary of War under President Jackson, sums up 19th-century Indian policy this way: "The Indians are entitled to the enjoyment of all the rights which do not interfere with the obvious designs of Providence."
1833	Abolition strengthens racial idea	The American Anti-Slavery Society forms in Philadelphia. By 1835, the society has established hundreds of branches throughout the free states, and anti-slavery sentiment is on the rise. But as attacks on slavery grow, so do the arguments in its defense. Slavery advocates turn to scientific and biblical arguments to "prove" that Negroes are distinct and inferior to whites. The "nature" of slaves, they maintain, not slaveholders' greed and avarice, is the cause of their condition. No longer is slavery defended as a "necessary evil" but as a "positive good." The rationale for slavery is so strong that when the institution is finally abolished in 1865, the racial idea lives on.
1839	Skulls measured to "prove" racial hierachy	Samuel Morton, the first famous American scientist, possesses the largest skull collection in the world. He claims to measure brain capacity through skull size, but makes systematic errors in favor of his assumptions, concluding: "[Their larger skulls gives Caucasians] decided and unquestioned superiority over all the nations of the earth." Morton's findings are later seized upon and popularized by pro-slavery scientists like Josiah Nott and Louis Agassiz. In just 60-70 years, Jefferson's tentative suggestion of racial difference becomes scientific "fact": "Nations and races, like individuals, have each an especial destiny: some are born to rule, and others to be ruled....No two distinctly-marked races can dwell together on equal terms." -Josiah Nott (1854)
1845	Manifest Destiny and war with Mexico	In a news editorial about the annexation of Texas, John O'Sullivan writes of America's "manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions." This now-famous phrase is used throughout the latter 19th century to justify the U.S.-Mexican War and American territorial expansion. White superiority and innate racial difference have become "common sense" and are invoked not only against Native Americans, Mexicans, and African Americans, but also to rationalize the acquisition of overseas territories.
1854	Nonwhites barred from testifying	In People v. Hall, the California Supreme Court reverses the conviction of a white man in a murder trial, ruling that the testimony of key Chinese witnesses is inadmissible because "no Black or mulatto person, or Indian, shall be allowed to give evidence in favor of, or against a white man." Chief Justice Charles J. Murray remarks that the Chinese are "a race of people whom nature has marked as inferior....The same rule which would admit them to testify, would admit them to all the equal rights of citizenship, and we might soon see them at the polls, in the jury box, upon the bench, and in our legislative halls. This is not a speculation...but an actual and present danger."
1854	Frederick Douglass challenges race scientists	As race science is embraced by public intellectuals, ex-slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass takes to the podium to challenge the "objectivity" of America's most prominent "race" scientists: "It is the province of prejudice to blind; and scientific writers, not less than others, write to please, as well as instruct, and even unconsciously to themselves sacrifice what is true to what is popular." A brilliant intellectual, Douglass garners admiration from even elite whites. In his 1895 obituary, however, the New York Times credits the "white blood" in him for his success and ponders "whether the fact that he had any black blood at all may not have cost the world a genius."