South Carolina Historical Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The South Carolina Historical Magazine. http://www.jstor.org Pinkney and Sarah Ross: The Legal Journey of an Ex-Slave and His White Wife on the Carolina Borderlands during Reconstruction Author(s): Mark Jones and John Wertheimer Source: The South Carolina Historical Magazine, Vol. 103, No. 4 (Oct., 2002), pp. 325-350 Published by: South Carolina Historical Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27570597 Accessed: 17-01-2016 04:54 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. This content downloaded from 137.52.76.29 on Sun, 17 Jan 2016 04:54:11 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions PINKNEY AND SARAH ROSS: THE LEGAL JOURNEY OF AN EX-SLAVE AND HIS WHITE WIFE ON THE CAROLINA BORDERLANDS DURING RECONSTRUCTION Mark Jones and John Wertheimer, et al* "[A1MIDST THE FIRING OF GUNS, THE RINGING OF BELLS, THE waving of handkerchiefs and the shouting of the multitude," the first passenger trainbetween Charlotte, North Carolina, and Spartanburg, South Carolina, pulled into the Spartanburg Depot on March 31,1873.1 Its route through the Piedmont of North and South Carolina would become familiar to Pinkney and Sarah Ross, a couple who would repeatedly shuttle back and forth across the state line during the 1870s. Pinkney, a black South Carolinian, and Sarah, a white North Carolinian, courted in North Carolina, married in South Carolina, and settled as newlyweds in North Carolina. Three years later, North Carolina indicted them for "fornication and adultery." Following a trial in Charlotte and a State Supreme Court appeal in Raleigh, they moved back to South Carolina, where they lived out their days. Interracial sex and marriage in the post-Civil War South have recently received considerable scholarly attention. Historians have documented *Jones and Wertheimer co-authored this article with: Brook Andrews, Joshua Bennett, Elizabeth Fleming, William Fortune, Christine Larned, J.J. McCarthy, Edward Page, Michael Wipfler, and Richard Wright. The article originated during the spring of 2000 as a collaborative research paper in Dr. Wertheimer's "Law and Society in American History" seminar at Davidson College. The authors would like to acknowledge the financial support of Davidson College as well as the assistance of: Paul Dellinger, Walter Edgar, Katherine Franke, Thomas Hanchett, Martha Hodes, Vicki Howard, Brian Luskey, Sally McMillen, Pam Rasfeld, Brian Smith, Ben and Katie Smoot, Christopher Waldrep, Peter Wallenstein, Jonathan Wells, and Richard Wertheimer. 1 "The First Train from Charlotte to Spartanburg," Carolina Spartan, 3 April 1873: 2. The rail line traversed Mecklenburg, Gaston, and Cleveland Counties in North Carolina and Spartanburg County in South Carolina. "Charlotte and Spartanburg," Charlotte Democrat, 8 April 1873: 3. The South Carolina Historical Magazine Volume 103, No. 4 (October 2002) This content downloaded from 137.52.76.29 on Sun, 17 Jan 2016 04:54:11 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 326 THE SOUTH CAROLINA HISTORICAL MAGAZINE both the "book law"2 and the "mob law"3 that combined to present increasingly formidable obstacles to interracial couples during these years, as whites sought new ways to enforce racial hierarchy following the end of slavery. Although this scholarship has cast clarifying light on a topic once shrouded in myth and denial,4 it has tended to be "top-down" in nature. By emphasizing the actions of dominant groups?legislatures, lynch mobs? these works have tended to portray interracial couples themselves as passive victims who, in the face of overwhelming opposition, exercised little control over their destinies. 2 See Peter W. Bardaglio, Reconstructing the Household: Families, Sex, and the Law in the 19th Century South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995). Whereas antebellum Southern elites relied most heavily on families and master slave relationships to keep order and control, Bardaglio asserts, the post-Civil War conservatives who returned to power following Reconstruction relied more heavily on the power of the state to regulate individual behavior. Laws championed by returning conservatives specifically targeted interracial relationships. See also Mary Frances Berry, "Judging Morality: Sexual Behavior and Legal Consequences in the Late Nineteenth Century South," Journal of American History, 78 (December 1991): 835-56; Peter Wallenstein, "Law and the Boundaries of Place and Race in Interracial Marriage: Interstate Comity, Racial Identity, and Miscegenation Laws in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia, 1860s-1960s," Akron Law Review, 32 (1999): 557-76; Peter Wallenstein, "Freedom: Personal Liberty and Private Law: Race, Marriage, and the Law of Freedom: Alabama and Virginia, 1860s-1960s," Chicago-Kent Law Review 70 (1994): 371-437; Alfred Avins, "Anti-Miscegenation Laws and the Fourteenth Amendment: The Original Intent," Virginia Law Review 52 (July 1966): 1224-55; and Harvey M. Applebaum, "Miscegenation Statutes: A Constitutional and Social Problem," Georgetown Law Journal 53 (1964): 49-91. 3 See Martha Hodes, White Women, Black Men: Illicit Sex in the Nineteenth Century South (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997). Hodes, the foremost authority on interracial sex in the nineteenth century American South, defines the attitude of pre Civil War Southern whites to interracial relationships as reluctant "toleration." After the war, however, white toleration declined and violent opposition increased. See also Scott Nelson, "Livestock, Boundaries, and Public Space in Spartanburg: African American Men, Elite White Women, and the Spectacle of Conjugal Relations," in Martha Hodes, ed. Sex, Love, Race: Crossing Boundaries in North American History (New York: New York University Press, 1999). Nelson identifies a burst of Ku Klux Klan activity directed at interracial couples in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and surrounding areas after the Civil War. See also Lee W. Formwalt, "Notes and Documents: A Case of Interracial Marriage During Reconstruction," The Alabama Review 45 (July 1992): 216-24. 4 On the "rape myth" of allegedly perpetual black male sexual pr?dation against white women?a myth that underlay not just lynching, Jim Crow, and White Supremacy, but also a widespread denial that any other sorts of sexual relationships could exist between black men and white women?see George Fredrickson, The Black Image in the White Mind: The Debate on Afro-American Character and Destiny, 1817 This content downloaded from 137.52.76.29 on Sun, 17 Jan 2016 04:54:11 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions PINKNEY AND SARAH ROSS 327 In this article, we attempt a "bottom-up" history of one interracial couple from the era: Pinkney and Sarah Ross. One of the Rosses' principal assets, we find, was their mobility. Living on the border between the Carolinas, they were aware of the opportunities and risks that communities in each state offered at different times. Like many other interracial couples of the day, they moved from place to place as necessary to exploit opportunities and avoid risks. Their experience, therefore, was not consistent with the static "book law" of either state, but was a dynamic "lived legal experience" of a borderland people. Reflective of the "top-down" scholarship on interracial marriage generally, previous scholars who have studied State v. Ross have looked only at the North Carolina Supreme Court ruling.5 But the Rosses' experience can teach us more. Pink and Sarah were more than flat names on the pages of a court record. They were thinking, feeling people who made calculated decisions to protect themselves, as well as they could, from legal and social dangers. Perhaps surprisingly, they succeeded. Sarah Spake and Pinkney Ross The future Sarah Ross was born to Samuel and Harriet Spake in 1845, the second of eight children. During Sarah's youth, the Spakes, who were white, moved frequently as they struggled to wring a livelihood from the red clay soil of the western North Carolina Piedmont.6 By 1870, they had settled on a small Lincoln County farm, about twenty miles north of the South Carolina line. Owning land, the Spakes were better off than some, but 1914 (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, Distributed by Harper & Row, 1987, c. 1971); Jacquelyn Down Hall, Revolt Against Chivalry: Jesse Daniel Ames and the Women's Campaign against Lynching (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979); Joel Williamson, Crucible of Race: Black-White Relations in the American South Since Emancipation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984); and Diane Miller Sommerville, "The Rape Myth in the Old South Reconsidered," The Journal of Southern History 61:3 (August 1995): 481-518. 5 Bardaglio, Reconstructing the Household, 188; Wallenstein, "Law and the Boundaries": 559; Hodes, White Women, Black Men, 266. 6 In 1850, the Spakes lived in Cleveland County, North Carolina; in 1860, they lived in neighboring Gaston County, North Carolina; in 1870, they lived in neighboring Lincoln County, North Carolina. See 1850 Census Population Schedules for Cleveland County, North Carolina, microcopy M-432, roll 625, p. 169; 1860 Census Population Schedules for Gaston County, North Carolina, microcopy M-653, roll 898, p. 3; 1870 Census Population Schedules for Lincoln County, North Carolina, microcopy M-593, roll 1146, p. 226. This content downloaded from 137.52.76.29 on Sun, 17 Jan 2016 04:54:11 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 328 THE SOUTH CAROLINA HISTORICAL MAGAZINE by no means were they wealthy. Their farm was one of the smallest in their relatively poor, rural community.7 According to a somewhat suspect family genealogy, young Sarah at some point married a white man, Perry Williams.8 Their marriage must have been brief, however, since Sarah was listed as single and living with her parents in both the 1860 census (when she was fifteen) and the 1870 census (when she was twenty-five). It seems likely that she and Perry married in the early 1860s and that he died soon thereafter, probably a Civil War casualty. With no husband and little money, Sarah returned home to her parents. As Sarah mourned the loss of her husband and helped her family eke out a living, Pinkney Ross (or "Pink," as he was commonly known) sought to take advantage of the new freedoms and mobility open to African Americans after the war. The son of Dock and Julia Ann Ross, Pink was born in Spartanburg County, South Carolina, around 1850.9 He almost certainly spent his childhood as a slave. The 1860 census reports that Spartanburg County contained 7,533 enslaved blacks but only twenty-six free blacks, making it extremely unlikely that Pink grew up free. Furthermore, if Pink's parents, who were also born in Spartanburg County, had been among the county's tiny group of free blacks, their names should have appeared in the South Carolina census's population schedules in the decades before emancipation, for these schedules listed free people, though not slaves, by name. Neither parent is listed in any population schedule between 1830 and 1860, reinforcing the likelihood that the Rosses were slaves. The northern Spartanburg County location, a surname in common, and sheer numbers suggest that Pink could well have belonged to D. B. Ross, who owned far more slaves than anyone else in the northern district of the county.10 7 The Spake's community was North Brook Township in western Lincoln County. 1870 Census Population Schedules for Lincoln County, North Carolina. Microcopy M-593, Roll 1146, p. 226. According to the 1870 Census, Samuel Spake owned $100 worth of real estate and $100 worth of personal estate. 8 Paul H. Dellinger, The Descendents of George and Jacob Dellinger (Lincolnton, NC: The Reprint Publisher's Press, 1995), 67. This source draws from "the family bible." It gives no date for the marriage of Sarah Spake and Perry Williams. In the compilation's preface, the author apologizes for the mistakes that he is certain exist within the work. 9 The 1900 Census reports that Pink was born in March of 1850. The exact date? or even year?of Pink's birth, however, is impossible to determine. It was recorded differently on his 1925 death certificate and in each of the Census records from 1870, 1880,1900,1910, and 1920. The only point of consensus among all of these records is that Pink was born between 1845 and 1851. 10 Slaves and emancipated blacks often took the surnames of earlier generations within their families. As these earlier generations often took the surnames of their first owners, these owners' names often stuck with black families in later generations. This content downloaded from 137.52.76.29 on Sun, 17 Jan 2016 04:54:11 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions PINKNEY AND SARAH ROSS 329 (Among D.B. Ross's sixty-one slaves in 1860 was a ten-year-old boy. This may well have been Pink.)11 After Emancipation, a teen-aged Pink left Spartanburg County, South Carolina, and headed across the state line to Cleveland County, North Carolina. He settled on John Byars' farm near Camp Creek, where he found work as a farm laborer.12 By 1870, then, a twenty-year-old Pink Ross and a twenty-five-year-old Sarah Spake were living in the same state, less than twenty-five miles apart. Somehow, they came together. They may have met through an apparent link between their respective extended families. Sarah Spake's mother was a Dellinger. Several Lincoln County Dellingers had owned slaves, some of whom would likely have been named Dellinger, too.13 The 1870 census of Lincoln County lists a black Dellinger family living together with a black Ross family.14 Interestingly, this Ross family had a one-year-old son named Pink. This young boy could have been named after a relative, perhaps an uncle, perhaps Pink Ross of Spartanburg County, South Carolina.15 Had this Pink visited this Ross family, he could have run across nearby Sarah Spake. Alternatively, Sarah may have gotten to know Pink while visiting relatives on her father's side in Cleveland County. The 1870 census lists two families of Spakes living in Camp Creek, close to John Byars' farm, where Pink lived and worked.16 However they met, Pink and Sarah took to each other, courted, and decided to marry. The decision to wed is always a big one, but it was Herbert G. Gutman, The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom,1750-1925 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1976), 250-56. 111860 Census Population Schedides, South Carolina, Slave Schedules, Spartanburg District, microcopy M-653, reel 1237, p. 171. D.B. Ross was one of the largest slave owners in the entire county, and clearly the largest in the northern district. 121870 Census Population Schedules Cleveland County, North Carolina, Microcopy M-593, Reel 1131, p. 128. Cherokee County, South Carolina, which today sits across the state line from Cleveland County, North Carolina, did not come into existence until the end of the nineteenth century, when it was carved out of three existing counties, including Spartanburg. 13 Gutman, Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 250-56. 14 1870 Census Population Schedules Lincoln County, North Carolina, microcopy 1148, reel 125, p. 125. The census lists Sarah Dellinger, black, age 59, as the head of a household in the Ironton Township of Lincoln County. Living with her were two teenage Dellingers and a black Ross family. Prior to emancipation, this black Dellinger family may have had a connection to the white Dellinger family. 15 Naming African American children for relatives outside of the immediate family was very common both before and after Emancipation. See Gutman, 93-95, 200-04. 16 2870 Census Population Schedules Cleveland County, North Carolina, microcopy M-593, reel 1131, p. 129. This content downloaded from 137.52.76.29 on Sun, 17 Jan 2016 04:54:11 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 330 THE SOUTH CAROLINA HISTORICAL MAGAZINE especially momentous for these two, given that the state in which they lived barred people like them from marrying each other. Tar Heel Law Interracial marriage had been illegal in North Carolina since colonial times.17 In Pink and Sarah's day, the controlling law was the Marriage Act of 1839, which banned "all marriages ... between a white person and a ... person of color to the third generation."18 Violators risked fines and imprisonment for up to ten years. Often harsher than the formal law was the court of public opinion. Interracial couples risked injury or death at the hands of lawless whites. The danger was particularly pronounced for couples that, like Pink and Sarah, matched black men with white women.19 Extra-legal threats of this sort existed throughout the Carolinas. Legal barriers to interracial marriage, however, existed only north of the state line. Perhaps aware that some interracial couples had gotten into legal trouble when they risked marriage in North Carolina,20 and perhaps aware that other interracial couples had avoided legal trouble by heading south of the border to celebrate their nuptials,21 Pink and Sarah opted for a South Carolina wedding. 17 In 1715, North Carolina passed an act that prohibited any white man or woman from marrying a black, mulatto, or Indian. The act also punished any minister who performed such a marriage. Carter G. Woodson, "The Beginnings of the Miscegenation of the Whites and Blacks," Journal of Negro History, 3 (October 1918): 345-46; Joseph R. Washington, Jr., Marriage in Black and White (Boston: Beacon Press, 1970), 45. 18Marriage Act of 1839, North Carolina Rev. Code, ch. 68, ?7, quoted in State v. Hairston, 63 N.C. 451, at 452 (1869). 19 Note the 1867 words of one white, male North Carolinian: "If the negro [man] marries an outcast white woman?of course no white woman who is not an outcast of the worst possible sort would ever think of marrying him?both he and she ought to be hung three minutes after the conclusion of the ceremony." Hinton Rowan Helper, Nojoque: A Question for a Continent (1867), 218, quoted in Hodes, White Women, Black Men, 151. 20 See State v. Alexander Reinhardt and Alice Love, 63 N.C. 547 (1869); State v. Wesley Hairston and Puss Williams, 63 N.C 451 (1869). The former case originated in Lincoln County, where Sarah Spake lived, increasing the likelihood that she and Pink were aware of it. 21 In 1869, for instance, Isaac Kennedy, a black man from Charlotte, North Carolina, and Mag Dulin, a white woman also from Charlotte, North Carolina, had gotten married in South Carolina and had immediately returned to Charlotte to live. As of the time of the Rosses' decision to wed, the Kennedys had lived in legal peace This content downloaded from 137.52.76.29 on Sun, 17 Jan 2016 04:54:11 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions PINKNEY AND SARAH ROSS 331 The Palmetto State In May of 1873, only a month after that first Charlotte train reached Spartanburg, South Carolina, the Ross-Spake wedding party arrived there. Although tradition dictated marriage on the bride's home turf, not the groom's,22 a Spartanburg wedding was prudent for this couple. Pink had family in the area. Spartanburg apparently was a good place for quick and easy marriages.23 Most importantly, Spartanburg was in South Carolina, where interracial marriages, at the time, were legal. Before the Civil War, when interracial marriage bans were common elsewhere, South Carolina had none; its social taboos against interracial marriage were so strong that none seemed necessary.24 But in 1865, South Carolina's white leaders, frightened by the end of slavery, passed a series of measures designed to maintain a lower-caste status for African Americans. Among these measures was an interracial marriage ban. It did not last long. Within a few years, a majority-black Republican government won control of the state legislature, and black sheriffs, magistrates, and other officials assumed office. At no other time in the history of South Carolina?a state where blacks outnumbered whites almost three to two25?had the in Charlotte for four years. See State v. Isaac Kennedy and Mag Kennedy, 76 N.C. 251 (1877). 22 See Arthur H. Cole, "The Price System and the Rites of Passage," American Quarterly, 14:4 (Winter 1962): 527-44; Steven M. Stowe, Intimacy and Power in the Old South (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987); Ellen K. Rothman, Hands and Hearts: A History of Courtship in America (New York: Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, 1984). Our thanks to Vicki Howard for her input on this point. 23 "A Runaway Match," Charlotte Observer, 25 December 1875: 1. This article relates the story of a couple from about fifteen miles east of town who eloped to Spartanburg one Sunday morning. They were preceded by a runner so that the marriage could be performed the moment they arrived, "before the old folks would have time to return from church and give chase." 24 Joel Williamson, After Slavery: The Negro in South Carolina during Reconstruction (New York: Norton, 1975), 295. It should be noted that, however rare interracial marriage may have been in antebellum South Carolina, interracial sex was not rare, due to the power that white slave owners possessed over their black female slaves. 25 In 1870, South Carolina's black population was about 416,000 while its white population was about 290,000. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970, Bicentennial Edition, Part 1 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Commerce, 1975), 34. This content downloaded from 137.52.76.29 on Sun, 17 Jan 2016 04:54:11 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 332 THE SOUTH CAROLINA HISTORICAL MAGAZINE government been so representative of its constituents.26 In 1868, the state legislature repealed South Carolina's ban on interracial marriages.27 After legalization, interracial marriages did not proliferate in South Carolina, but their tiny numbers did increase. Some of this increase had in state origins. The war had taken the lives of approximately one third of the state's white men of military age.28 Tens of thousands of white South Carolina women lost husbands or suitors. A few of these women married black men.29 Decriminalization also attracted mixed couples from elsewhere. Exploiting their freedom of movement?and demonstrating legal savvy? interracial couples trickled into South Carolina after the 1868 repeal. Most migrants appear to have settled just inside South Carolina's borders. For instance, according to the 1880 census, Fort Mill, South Carolina?a stone's throw from the North Carolina line?contained fifteen times as many interracial couples as did Broad River, a community of roughly similar size and demographics in the middle of the state.30 Interestingly, the majority of 26 Walter Edgar, South Carolina: A History (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1998), 388. See also James S. Pike, The Prostrate State: South Carolina Under Negro Government (New York: Harper and Row, 1968), 13. Blacks constituted a majority in the Legislature throughout the early 1870s, holding as many as 101 of 124 seats in the House of Representatives in 1873. Many white South Carolinians were outraged by their loss of political clout. As one Charleston woman wrote to the Charlotte Democrat: "Our Legislature is made up of Negroes who can't sign their names and adventurers who had to leave home for fear of the penitentiary.... To own property is a curse. To be a Negro is a blessing, but to be a Negro rascal is the greatest of all blessings. To be white and honest is the sure road to ruin and despair." "A Fearful Picture of Negro Rule in South Carolina," Charlotte Democrat, 16 April 1872: 2. 27 Edgar, South Carolina: A History, 383. See also Lerone Bennett, Black Power U.S.A.: The Human Side of Reconstruction,1867-1877 (Chicago: Johnson Publishing Company, 1967), 136. 28 Edgar, South Carolina: A History, 375. 29 Joel Williamson, New People: Miscegenation and Mulattoes in the United States (New York: Free Press, 1980), 89. 30 For Fort Mill, see 1880 Census Population Schedules York County, South Carolina, microcopy T-9, reel 1243, pp. 520-48. According to census figures, there were fifteen interracial couples living in Fort Mill, South Carolina, in 1880. Of these, twelve paired black men with white women: John and Margaret Reid (p. 520), Stephan and Margaret Potts (p. 521), Isaac and Pontricia Broom (p. 522), Warren and Lizzie Turner (p. 526), Hiram and Sallie Roddy (p. 526), Adam and Lizzie Parker (p. 527), Lawson and Jane Pope (p. 527), Jackson and Rachel Kenzer (p. 527), William and Lottie Rainey (p. 529), Chapman and Adeline Osborne (p. 538), Joe and Jane Jackson (p. 541) and William and Margaret Gaither (p. 546). Two paired white men with black women: Mack and Alice Fewill (p. 522), and Nash and Louisa Morrow (p. 522). This content downloaded from 137.52.76.29 on Sun, 17 Jan 2016 04:54:11 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions PINKNEY AND SARAH ROSS 333 Fort Mill's interracial couples had migrated there from North Carolina.31 Thus, when Pink Ross and Sarah Spake chose to wed in South Carolina, just across from the North Carolina line, they were part of a broader movement.32 Their moving, however, was not yet done. Conditions in the Palmetto State, where war and Reconstruction had exacted a heavy toll, apparently discouraged the newly weds from staying there long. Deeply in debt, South Carolina had raised taxes to burdensome levels.33 Locally, Midwestern grain, shipped cheaply on new rail lines, had severely damaged Spartanburg's corn-based economy. Pink, a farm laborer, could well have found himself without work. Equally troubling to the Rosses may have been the gruesome prevalence of Ku Klux Klan activity that appeared to accompany the collapse of the local corn economy.34 Spartanburg, in other words, was a great place to get married, but a poor place for the Rosses to One paired a mulatto man and a white woman: Ervin and Margaret Reid (p. 528). For Broad River, see 1880 Census Population Schedides Lexington County, South Carolina, microcopy T-9, reels 1233-1234, pp. 321-47. There was only one interracial couple living in Broad River in 1880: John and Caroline Long, a mulatto man and white woman (p. 326). These Fort Mill figures are more conservative than contemporary estimates. In 1879, during a debate over proposed anti-intermarriage legislation in the State House of Representatives, a Democratic Representative from Fort Mill reported that as many as twenty-five or thirty interracial couples were living in the town and that most had moved there from North Carolina. Largely on the strength of this report, the South Carolina state legislature once again adopted a ban on interracial marriage. This was one of the results of the Democratic resurgence in South Carolina, which began in the mid-1870s. See George B. Tindall, South Carolina Negroes, 1877-1900 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1952), 296-98. 31 This conclusion is based on the birthplace listings for the Fort Mill interracial couples listed in the U.S. census. In the cases of eight of Fort Mill's fourteen interracial couples, both partners (husband and wife) had been born in North Carolina. Further, the parents (both mother and father) of seven of these eight had also been born in North Carolina. Clearly, many of these families had strong roots in North Carolina. By moving to Fort Mill, they remained as close as possible to their North Carolina kin while still living in a state that allowed interracial marriage. 32 State v. Ross, 76 N.C. 242, at 243 (1877). 33 Edgar, South Carolina: A History, 394. Edgar also discusses allegations of widespread Republican corruption. 34 The economic upheaval from the devastation of the local corn crop appears to have corresponded with some of the worst racial violence of the Reconstruction era. Wheat prices were cut in half between 1868 and 1872, hurting local corn producers. Furthermore, in 1870, the State of South Carolina acquired land in Spartanburg County for redistribution to newly freed slaves, who constituted one third of the county's population. The distribution of land to blacks heightened racial tensions, which were already strained by the region's economic malaise. Traditionally, This content downloaded from 137.52.76.29 on Sun, 17 Jan 2016 04:54:11 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 334 THE SOUTH CAROLINA HISTORICAL MAGAZINE live. In August 1873, three months after their wedding, Pink and Sarah headed northeast to the bustling border town of Charlotte, North Carolina. The Queen City of the South Interracial marriages were just as illegal in North Carolina in August 1873 as they had been in May. But having been married legally and having lived for three months elsewhere, Pink and Sarah may have believed that their legal risks had been reduced, that their South Carolina marriage was "transferable" to North Carolina. In any event, Charlotte's call must have been hard to resist. The town was booming. Its position at the center of six radiating rail lines had made it a trading center for cotton, the region's signature crop, and had transformed it from an "unpretending village" in 1850 into the economic "'hub' of this whole region."35 Charlotte's robust economy attracted thousands of hopeful job seekers, among them, Pink and Sarah Ross.36 At the time of the Rosses' move, Republicans still controlled much of the local government; consequently, legal risks in the Ninth Judicial District seemed modest.37 Republican solicitor W. P. Bynum apparently did not white corn farmers in the area had been able to force blacks to buy their crops, with the help of white slave-owners and landlords, who often had a stake in the corn crop. Because of their newfound freedoms, however, blacks were able to buy the less expensive wheat flour. Around the same time, Klan activity in the area exploded. Spartanburg became a hotbed of violent opposition to Congressional Reconstruction. See Scott R. Nelson, Iron Confederacies: Southern Railways, Klan Violence, and Reconstruction (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 119-20. 35 "North Carolina and the Region Round Charlotte," Southern Home, 1 March 1875: 2. See also "What Travelers think of Charlotte," Charlotte Democrat, 10 February 1874: 3 ("A new era has dawned for this town.... [S]he will speedily be transformed into a full fledged city, ambitious of being second to none of the interior ones in the South"). 36 Since the 1850s, Charlotte had grown rapidly. The Civil War did little to slow this growth, since Charlotte never came under direct attack. In the first years of Reconstruction, cotton prices were quite strong. Charlotte's population expanded along with its cotton-based economy. Having already quadrupled in population between 1850 and 1870, Charlotte experienced another burst of growth during the early 1870s. Thomas W. Hanchett, Sorting Out the New South City: Race, Class, and Urban Development in Charlotte, 187 5-197 5 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 22-25, 41; Janette Greenwood, Bittersweet Legacy: The Black and White "Better Classes" in Charlotte, 1850-1910 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), 40-41, 56-62. 37 The Ninth Judicial District was comprised of Cabarrus, Cleveland, Gaston, Lincoln, Mecklenburg, Rutherford, and Polk Counties. Charlotte is in Mecklenburg County. This content downloaded from 137.52.76.29 on Sun, 17 Jan 2016 04:54:11 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions PINKNEY AND SARAH ROSS 335 prosecute interracial couples aggressively, and Republican Superior Court Judge George Logan had a reputation for leniency.38 That reputation seems well deserved. In State v. Reinhardt and Love (1869), Alexander Reinhardt, a "person of color," and Alice Love, a white woman, had married in North Carolina, notwithstanding the 1839 Marriage Act. Although the violation seemed clear, Judge Logan ordered a verdict of not guilty.39 Conservatives were outraged but not surprised, for they regarded Judge Logan as a Radical Republican who "would decide in favor of the negro every time."40 In the 1874 elections, anti-Reconstruction Democrats set their sights on pro-Reconstruction Republicans in the Ninth Judicial District and across the state. For solicitor, local Democrats nominated W. J. Montgomery, a Confederate veteran and a loyal party man. To challenge Judge Logan, the Democrats nominated David Schenck, a promising young attorney and a former Ku Klux Klan chief.41 Just three years previously, a federal grand jury had indicted Schenck on charges of "Ku Kluxing" in Lincoln County, 38 As evidenced by the Mecklenburg Superior County Court Minutes from 1868 to 1874, during Logan's term as Judge, Solicitor Bynum brought and Logan tried a fair number of "Fornication and Adultery" cases?the same charge that Pink and Sarah would face later in the 1870s. Yet, none of the cases that we have succeeded in tracking involved interracial defendants. Rather, Bynum and Logan seem to have focused on same-race couples who cohabited without the benefit of marriage. A 1914 historical essay had this to say about Judge Logan: "[Logan] was elected as Superior Court Judge in 1868 by that [Republican] party and it is claimed that he became very partisan and incompetent in his official duties as a judge. The criminal laws, it seems, were not enforced by him. Many of the negroes who committed crimes went unpunished. The sentences on the negroes that he did punish were light while the punishment of the Democrats was heavy." J.R. Davis, "Reconstruction in Cleveland County," in Historical Papers, Series X (Durham: Trinity College Historical Society, 1914): 23. 39 State v. Reinhardt and Love, 63 N.C. 547 (1869). The North Carolina Supreme Court reversed Judge Logan in this case, citing State v. Wesley Hairston and Puss Williams, 63 N.C. 451 (1869), to the effect that "white persons and persons of color cannot intermarry in North Carolina." 40 "The Canvass," Charlotte Democrat, 22 June 1874: 3. Logan's actions in cases such as State v. Reinhardt and Love so outraged Democrats that, in 1872, they tried? unsuccessfully?o impeach Judge Logan. See "The Case of Judge Logan," Charlotte Democrat, 9 January 1872: 3. Democratic complaints about Logan were plentiful in Charlotte's Democratic newspapers throughout the early 1870s. 41 Schenck was nominated on May 13,1874, over two other distinguished men, Hon. William M. Shipp and Col. John F. Hoke. Shipp ultimately would provide legal defense to Pink and Sarah Ross. In March 1874, the conservative Southern Home discussed the upcoming Ninth Judicial District elections in revealing terms: "We want, as our candidate, an able lawyer; an incorruptible man... .in one word, we want a man just the opposite morally and intellectually, to the present incumbent.... Our This content downloaded from 137.52.76.29 on Sun, 17 Jan 2016 04:54:11 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 336 THE SOUTH CAROLINA HISTORICAL MAGAZINE the county where Sarah Spake lived before marrying Pink Ross.42 Schenck's legal prowess, his KKK connections, and his conviction that African Americans were "poor, deluded, ignorant creatures"43 apparently made him an attractive judicial candidate to Democrats. "Logan is the representative of the negro party," the local Democratic press blared; "Schenck is the representative of the white man."44 The racial politics proved successful. Montgomery and Schenck swept to victory in the Ninth Judicial District, just as their fellow Democrats did across the state.45 In words that must have made the Rosses shudder, Charlotte Democrats applauded the 1874 election returns: "all white men who are in favor of a white man's Government, achieved a great victory."46 North Carolina Democrats, in step with resurgent Democrats elsewhere in the former Confederacy,47built on their electoral momentum the following year by calling a state constitutional convention. Their goal was to do away with the "Reconstruction Constitution" of 1868, an instrument that, Democrats insisted, had been imposed on an unwilling people.48 One proposed change was the addition of an interracial marriage ban. Although this provision would not alter the state's criminal law?interracial marriages were already illegal?it would shine a political spotlight on the issue of interracial marriage. Charlotte Democrats cited the interracial marriage amendment as one of a handful of reasons why "every honest white man" should support the new Constitution.49 candidate must be free from those qualities which Logan possesses. " "Judge of the 9th Judicial District," Southern Home, 16 March 1874: 2. 42 Charlotte Democrat, 9 January 1872: 3. 43 David Schenck Diary, 304, housed in the David Schenck Papers, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. 44 Charlotte Democrat, 22 June 1874:3. A similar sentiment appeared on the pages of the Southern Home: "[Logan] is a representative man of his party. The negroes like him, and that is the only qualification he needs." "Independent Candidates," Southern Home, 1 June 1874: 2. 45 Democratic candidates for Congress defeated their Republican adversaries in seven of the state's eight Congressional Districts, and Democrats carried the majority of the state's elections for judge and solicitor. "List of N.C. Congressmen, Judges, and Solicitors," Southern Home, 17 August 1874: 2. 46 "The Election," Charlotte Democrat, 10 August 1874: 3. 47 "In 1876, as in other Southern states, North Carolina adopted another constitution to replace the dictated [1868] instrument." William Swindler, ed., Sources and Documents of United States Constitutions (Dobbs Ferry, NY.: Oceana Publications, 1973-1979), vol. 7, 356. 48 Democrat legislators argued that, as of 1875, the "dictated" Constitution of 1868 was, "in many particulars, unsuited to the wants and condition of our people." "An Act to Call a Convention of the People of North Carolina," Southern Home, 2 August 1875: 2, quoting the actual act. 49 "The Amendments," Charlotte Democrat, 14 February 1876: 3. This article This content downloaded from 137.52.76.29 on Sun, 17 Jan 2016 04:54:11 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions PINKNEY AND SARAH ROSS 337 The new Constitution went into effect in 1876, the same year in which Democrats completed their political sweep of North Carolina by retaking the Governor's Mansion.50 For the Rosses, the Democratic triumph was ominous news. Although local Democrats insisted that their leadership would benefit all residents, black and white alike, they made clear their intention to impose specific boundaries that blacks would not be allowed to cross. The Charlotte Democrat explained: "While white men intend to rule in the county and State Governments, and do not want any negro office holders, they .. intend to accord to the negro all rights in law and equity. But imprudence and social equality will never be tolerated or permitted."51 In Democratic eyes, few examples of "imprudence and social equality" could have been less tolerable, less likely to be permitted, than marriages between black men and white women.52 The Democrats Crack Down In the summer of 1876, Solicitor Montgomery brought record numbers of fornication and adultery ("F&A") cases against interracial couples. Previous solicitors had prosecuted "F&A" cases,