Race Distinctions in American LawStephenson, Gilbert Thomas
History
Race Distinctions in American Law
Stephenson, Gilbert Thomas
African Americans -- Politics and government; Law -- United States -- History; United States -- Race relations
The following persons South Carolina[113] classed as vagrants: (1) all
persons who have not some fixed and known place of abode, and some
lawful and reputable employment; (2) those who have not some visible and
known means of a fair, honest, and reputable livelihood; (3) all common
prostitutes; (4) those who are found wandering from place to place,
vending, bartering, or peddling any articles or commodities without a
license; (5) all common gamblers; (6) persons who lead idle or
disorderly lives, or keep or frequent disorderly or disreputable houses
or places; (7) those who, not having sufficient means of support, are
able to work and do not work; (8) those who (whether or not they own
lands, or are lessees or mechanics) do not provide a reasonable and
proper maintenance for themselves and families; (9) those who are
engaged in representing publicly or privately, for fee or reward,
without license, any tragedy, interlude, comedy, farce, play, or other
similar entertainment, exhibition of the circus, sleight-of-hand,
waxworks, or the like; (10) those who, for private gain, without
license, give any concert or musical entertainment, of any description;
(11) fortune tellers; (12) sturdy beggars; (13) common drunkards; (14)
those who hunt game of any description, or fish on the land of others or
frequent the premises, contrary to the will of the occupants. That the
South Carolina legislature had the Negro primarily in mind is shown by
the fact that this section is included in the act “to establish and
regulate the domestic relations of persons of color and to amend the law
in relation to paupers and vagrancy.”
Mississippi[114] had a vagrancy list almost as extensive as that above
with the addition that any freedmen, free Negroes, or mulattoes over
eighteen years of age, found on the second Monday in January, 1866, or
thereafter, with no lawful employment or business, or found unlawfully
assembling themselves together in the day or night time, and white
persons “so assembling with freedmen, free Negroes, or mulattoes ... on
terms of equality, or living in adultery or fornication with a
freedwoman, free Negro, or mulatto,” should be considered vagrants. The
white man so convicted was punishable by a fine of two hundred dollars
and imprisonment for not more than six months; the Negro, by a fine of
fifty dollars and imprisonment for not over ten days. A Negro unable to
pay his fine might be hired out for the purpose, but no such provision
applied to whites.
PAUPER LAWS
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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