The "Free Blacks" dataset was created from The Mayor's Register of Free Blacks in the City of New Orleans from 1840 to 1864. The source document is located in the New Orleans City Archive as The Mayor's Register of Free Blacks in the City of New Orleans from 1840 to 1864. The register was a government document in which free blacks with less than 50% white ancestry (referred to as mulattoes, grifs, and negroes) were required to register themselves.

The Mayor's Register of Free Blacks in the City of New Orleans from 1840 to 1864 was created after the Louisiana state legislature passed a law prohibiting the emigration of free blacks into the state on March 16, 1830. In order to police the free black populace and to prevent the introduction of new free blacks into Louisiana, the law required "all free negroes, griffs and mulattoes of the first degree" who had entered the state after the adoption of the Constitution of 1812 and before January 1, 1825 to enroll themselves with the office of the Parish Judge of their resident parish or with the office of the Mayor of the City of New Orleans. The rolls kept by these offices were to include the person's "age, sex, colour, trade or calling, place of nativity and the time of their arrival in the State." A fee of fifty cents was charged to the registrant at the time of enrollment. [1]

Describing free black emigrants as “floating scum,” the New Orleans True American argued that the introduction of additional free blacks into state “sowed dissention among slaves” and encouraged the flight of their enslaved population toward freedom in the north. Writing on the prohibition of free black emigration into the state, the True American maintained that the barring of free blacks from its borders was desired “to effect the safety of the people of the south–their happiness–their comfort." [2]

[1] Register of free persons of color entitled to remain in the state, 1840-1864, AA430, Records of the Office of the Mayor, City Archives, New Orleans Public Library, New Orleans, Louisiana, http://nutrias.org/~nopl/inv/neh/nehaa.htm#fpc.
[2] “Our Free-Colored Population,” True American (New Orleans), February 12, 1839, 2.

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