Brass Ankles

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Brass Ankles/Croatan
Beaver Creek Indians, Louisiana Creole people

The Brass Ankles of South Carolina, also referred to as Croatan, lived in the swamp areas of Goose Creek, South Carolina and Holly Hill, South Carolina (Crane Pond) in order to escape the harshness of racism and the Indian Removal Act. African slaves and European indentured servants sought refuge amongst the Indians and collectively formed a successful community. Many of them are direct descendants of Robert Sweat and Margarate Cornish.

Although these individuals were of mixed ancestry and free before the

Reconstruction, white Democrats regained power in the South and imposed racial segregation and white supremacy under Jim Crow laws. United States Census surveys included a category of "mulatto" until 1930 when the powerful Southern bloc in Congress pushed through requirements to have people classified only as black or white. By that time, most Southern states had passed laws under which persons of any known black ancestry were required to be classified in state records as black, under what is known as the "one-drop rule" of hypodescent
.

The binary classifications required individuals to be classified as white or black, even if they had long been recorded and identified as "Indian" (Native American) or mixed race. However, most self-identified as

Beaver Creek Indians community, for instance. Some of the Sweat, Chavis, and Driggers families migrated from the Marlboro County, South Carolina
area in the early 1800s.

Numerous people of mixed race have lived in a section of Orangeburg County near Holly Hill called Crane Pond. The term "brass ankles" generally was applied to those of mixed ancestry, one can also find the term Brassankles being applied to the mixed race, families of nearby Dorchester and Colleton County, South Carolina. They often had a large majority of white ancestry and would have been considered legally white in early 19th-century society.[1] The Crane Pond community has maintained its cultural continuity. Reflecting on their ethnic diverse ancestry, there are many local stories about the origins of these people.

Some people formerly classified as "Brass Ankles" have been identified as among ancestors of members of the five Native American tribes officially recognized by the state of South Carolina in 2005, such as the

multiracial ancestry including Africans, and their white neighbors did not understand much about Indian culture, they were often arbitrarily classified as mulatto by census enumerators, who were most concerned about African ancestry. After 1930, when the US census dropped the Mulatto classification at the instigation of the southern white Democratic Congressional block, such multiracial people were often thereafter classified as black, a designation in the South used for anyone visibly "of color".[1]

Contrary to some assertions, each

Dubose Heyward, author of Porgy and Bess, with music by George Gershwin
, wrote a play about the Brass Ankles, set in the aftermath of the Civil War.

Some Brass Ankles in the community of

freedmen
. The Eureka "Ricka" school in Charleston County was an example of such an Indian school.

See also

Creels of Creeltown

References in popular culture

  • Play by Dubose Heyward about Brass Ankles.

References

  1. ^ a b Bo Petersen, "Local tribe reclaims its roots, heritage"[permanent dead link], 17 April 2005, accessed 14 December 2011

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Brass Ankles.
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