On his first trip to the Deep South to work as an itinerant painter, George Fuller (1822-1884) of Deerfield, Massachusetts, commented in his diary of seeing “negroes” at work and in leisure time. In the first entry selected here, Fuller appears stunned that among those he witnessed being baptized, one was so white he “could not detect the dark shade.” Many enslaved women were raped by their enslavers and overseers, resulting in mixed race children. Laws throughout the South, however, ruled that regardless of a child’s parentage, if the mother was enslaved, so too would be her offspring.
Fuller, George. Excerpts from the diary of George Fuller. 1850. Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, American Centuries. https://americancenturies.org/collection/l05-122/. Accessed on December 21, 2024.
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