Sir, we are but two travelers in your country, on our return to Europe, and our homeland, Italy. We have decided to leave this country after a truly horrible encounter in Missouri and encountered your article "What is a White Man?" as we were waiting for our ship.
You state in your article that in Missouri, "the color-line is drawn at one-fourth of Negro blood, and persons with only one-eighth are white." This was not the case in our experience. One of us was accused of a truly gruesome murder. Of course, we were innocent, but the true murderer was about 1/32nd Black. For the large part of his life, he lived as a rich White man, and the threat of reveling the smallest fraction of himself, in part, led him to murder. Once found out, he was sold into slavery. He was not considered White, once the truth was revealed, despite having far less than 1/4th Blood and having every reputation (excepting murder) and practice of a White man.
While this issue of slavery is indeed tangled, we must agree with you that these "black laws" are flawed and should be put to bed. They leave much for doubt, confusion, and trickery. Never would we have encountered such problems in Italy.
Sincerly,
Counts Luigi and Angelo Capello
Questions
1)What was the actual implementation of "black laws"? I assume from Pudd'nhead Wilson (not the best source in this matter) that the matter was simply how you were raised. How did these legal discrepancies with reality(how you were treated, whether or not you were a slave) change how people identified?
2)Du Bois begins The Souls of Black Folks discussing the question "How does it feel to be a problem?" What is the result of seeing Blackness as a "problem"?
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