The Children of Africa in the Colonies: Free People of Color in Barbados in the Age of Emancipation

6. Men of Property, Character, and Education: The Afro-Barbadian Bourgeois Public Sphere

6 / men of property, character, and education The Afro-Barbadian Bourgeois Public Sphere With the coming of emancipation, desegregation seemed a more realistic goal than it ever had during slavery. For the first time, during apprenticeship, elite Afro-Barbadian men publicly embraced emancipation as the moment of their freedom and former slaves as their “brethren,” in some cases out of a sincere commitment to emancipation and, in others, as a convenient strategy to demonstrate to local whites and imperial authorities that they were the legitimate political representatives of a vast constituency of newly emancipated people. In keeping with the imperial government’s view of free Afro-Caribbean people as an important aspect of the empire’s strategy for managing the transition from slavery to freedom, the governors of Barbados during and immediately after apprenticeship selected a small number of wealthy men of color for political appointments. Nevertheless, despite imperial administrators’ claims to support the desegregation of state institutions in the British Caribbean as part of their emancipation policy, most Afro-Barbadian men’s hopes for political appointments were frustrated and very much contingent upon the whims of individual administrators and creole planter-politicians, who almost invariably blocked such appointments. Still, elite men of color remained determined to translate their bourgeois respectability into political influence, and they continued their very public involvements with philanthropy and their petitioning campaigns to the local legislature and to the Crown while attempting to harness the popular support of a wider cross section of Afro-Barbadians. The most progressive wing of Afro-Barbadian reformist politics gained a new and powerful conduit through which to convey its political views to a wider public in Barbados and in Britain during apprenticeship, when, for the first time, newspapers owned and edited by people of color were founded in the island. The establishment of a printed media beyond the control 175 men of property, character, and education of the local white creole elite transformed the terrain of local politics. The editors’ advocacy of and frequent reporting on the struggles of rural apprentices and newly free estate workers created, for the first time, a tangible connection between rural laborers and the predominantly urban political world of elite free people of color. Their support for the struggles of the poor and underprivileged elevated the editors of these newspapers, who were young and previously relatively obscure figures , to the status of popular heroes who could claim widespread support among Afro-Barbadians and challenge the place of the merchant elite as the most influential voice in Afro-Barbadian politics. Still, while these newspapers became the platform for a wide range of reformist, plebian and radical politics, the editors were not themselves of laboring-class background, and their attitudes toward the laboring poor reflected their urban and bourgeois sensibilities. a dangerous intelligence The hypocrisy of the imperial government’s attitude toward free Afro-Caribbean people was embodied in the person and politics of Governor Lionel Smith. Free Afro-Barbadians’ initially high hopes for his tenure as governor were quickly disappointed . When he first arrived in the island, Smith gave his backing to the enfranchisement of a larger number of free people of color. By the middle of apprenticeship, however, less than two years after he first became governor, he had reconsidered his position. In 1835, rather than supporting the lowering of the franchise requirement for Afro-Barbadians to ten pounds, he instead recommended to the Colonial Office that the franchise qualification for white voters be increased to thirty pounds, where it currently stood for voters of color. Smith claimed in an 1835 dispatch that free Afro-Barbadians would accept a higher franchise qualification for everyone, so long as the principle of equality was respected : “[T]hey would be satisfied, even if it was raised to £40 or £50—all they maintain is, if we are British subjects, give us equal Rights; don’t [sic] restrict us if we have Qualifications of property, Character, and Education, by Laws of complexion .”1 Smith’s change of heart was motivated by the realization that large numbers of former slaves might actually be able, by dint of hard work, to earn enough money to enter the ranks of property owners and qualify for the vote. He noted that “if 1. CO 28/115, No. 14, Smith to Aberdeen, 29 March 1835. 176 the children of africa in the colonies...