Black Bourgeoisie

Origins: Emancipation to 1915

Many scholars have traced the roots of the Black bourgeoisie to the distinctions that arose among the plantation slave communities and among free Blacks of the antebellum period. In slave communities, Blacks were divided into two general groups: house slaves and field slaves. The former were typically related to their White masters by kinship and occupation, and, as progenies of their masters and slave women, they were more likely to have greater privileges than field hands, who performed the more arduous physical outside labor under extremely adverse conditions. The accrued benefits and rewards of favored house servants included more material resources and creature comforts, such as access to better food and clothing and more skilled and semiskilled trades. In addition, the house slaves had more intimate contact with their masters and adopted their manners and styles. Hence, house slaves were more advantaged than the field hands in terms of the social capital required to acquire educational and economic opportunities after emancipation or to have a greater chance to purchase their freedom before emancipation.

Free Blacks, many of whom were partly of White ancestry, were most crucial to the development of class distinctions within the Black community. As a means to acquiring wealth, free Blacks could purchase land and real estate in various urban areas of the North, like Boston and Philadelphia; in the upper South; and even in some places in the deep South, like New Orleans, Louisiana. They were also able to engage in labor as skilled artisans, working as barbers, caterers, and tailors serving a primarily White clientele. Free Blacks also set up small businesses, worked as domestics, and, in a few cities like Boston, worked in the professions of ministry, teaching, law, and dentistry.

In sum, during the antebellum period, the invidious distinctions of having White ancestry, owning property, having descended from free Blacks or house servants, and having engaged in occupations as skilled artisans or in a few professions became institutionalized as important differentiating characteristics of the Black bourgeoisie after emancipation. In addition, other criteria of prestige for entry into this class varied, depending on whether the Black elite lived in a rural or urban area or in the North or South. These criteria included respectability, a rigid code of morals and manners, education, lifestyle, occupation, income, organizational affiliation, leadership roles in church or school, cultural similarity to Whites, and status of employer.