Omowale Jabali : Strange Fruit From The Family Tree

[Omowale Jabali]

I will check the link out. I am currently trying to track down my father's side of my picture. With the limited knowledge that I have of him with only his name. I have my work cut out for me.

Best wishes in your Journey!

 

[houserunner]

Best wishes in your Journey!

Thanks, and I hope that you find what you are looking for as well. Peace.

 

[SlickBeast]

I have spent over 20 years researching all sides of my family history. I know. Some of you have heard or read about this before. In the course of this research, I have had to accept some disturbing facts. Mostly related to the legacy of slavery. Yeah. Here we go again. Not really though. This post is a little different. Its about one slave master in particular who shows up in my family tree. After all these years, I can no longer ignore him or pretend he does not exist. I discovered him recently while digging through my Louisiana roots. As I was searching through the records for a branch of my family named "St.Martin", I was led to some Louisiana Slave Records, which opened the door that I was searching for. The path through Saint Dominique (prior to the Haitian Revolution) back to the Congo. The deeper I go into the path, the more that is revealed to me, so please excuse me if I seem "strange" to you.

So you are part French?

 

[Omowale Jabali]

So you are part French?

I am obviously of mixed ancestry. I have several posts here where I have shared my genealogy reports under the titles Introduction to the Bible With Complexion, The Jabali Manuscript, and From the Sons of God to the Sons of Man.

Most Black people I know with ancestry from Louisiana have some French and Spanish somewhere in their familial lineage.

 

[skuderjaymes]

I'd like to know about what a GRIF is, if you have time to educate or at least point me to some material to read up on the subject.

Thanks

It was a term used in Louisiana Slave schedules for an African/Native American mix. I have found no other reference for this term.

Peace Omowalejabali and Houserunner..

Really interesting thread. I found an interesting reference on Google books about the term GRIF. It's from the book "Africans In Colonial Louisiana, the development of Afro-Creole culture in the 18th century".

It says on Page 262,

"The Pointe Coupee documents distinguish four racial categories among people of African descent: negre, mulatre, grif and quarteron. Negre meant entirely black; mulatre meant half white and half black; grif meant mixture of black and indian; quarteron meant three quarters white and one-quarter black. The use of the term grif reflects legal concerns as well as problems of definition. A significant number of creole slaves, especially the first generation, had Indian mothers. Slaves who were descendants of Indians were rarely acknowledged as such in the lists of slaves, for a practical reason: Indian slavery was prohibited under Spanish law, and therefore, slaves descended from Indian women were legally entitled to their freedom. One can safely concluded that those slaves listend in the Pointe Coupee inventories as grif were on a fraction of the slaves who were mixtures of blacks and Indians. by the early 1790's, grif slaves disappeared entirely from the Pointe Coupee lists and mulatto slaves increased, indicating a redefinition to prevent slaves descended from Indian Mothers from claiming their freedom under Spanish law."

http://books.google.co.jp/books?id=...&sa=X&ei=5Vl4T5xnjOOYBfHV8OkP&ved=0CCEQ6AEwAA


..and that same search netted a connection between Louisiana and the Congo.

During this period [SPANISH PERIOD (1764-1803)], the cultural composition of Louisianians became more complex. For starters, the Spanish Crown sought slaves who were not Muslims, which accounted for a massively Congo presence within the local slave population. The Congos were from what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Congo. Historian Gwendolyn Midlo-Hall noted in a radio interview that during this period, many of the slave households consisted of Wolof wives and Congo husbands, which I have substantiated in extant civil and parochial records.​

http://christophelandry.com/2011/02/04/louisiana-myths-quadroons-octoroons/