Lumbee Indians in the Jim Crow South: Race, Identity, and the Making of a Nation (review)

Malinda Maynor Lowrey's Lumbee Indians in the Jim Crow South provides a detailed history of the Indians of Robeson County, North Carolina, during their struggle to maintain identity and assert nationhood in the face of systemic racism from both state and federal governments. Lowrey argues that the identity markers central to Robeson County Indians—particularly kinship and settlement in Indian communities in and around Robeson County—have historically been seen as irrelevant (or not seen at all) by government agencies seeking to determine "tribal" identity while upholding white supremacist laws.

Robeson County Indians are the descendants of refugees from Native nations that settled in North Carolina after waves of colonial wars and smallpox epidemics. "Like the Catawbas, Creeks, Choctaws, Seminoles, and other Indian groups in the East," Lowrey points out, "Robeson County's Indians are a 'nation of nations' for whom a formal name ultimately became necessary primarily for negotiating with colonial, state, and federal authorities" (5). This process of naming—usually imposed by people and agencies from outside of the community—led the Robeson County Indians to be recognized by North Carolina as the "Croatan Indians" in 1885 and later as "the Cherokee Indians of Robeson County" in 1913. As Robeson County Indians continued to push for federal recognition, already-existing political divides were deepened. The largely middle-class residents of Pembroke were often in favor of seeking recognition under the "Cherokee" name already given to them. The Native people in other settlements (who often lived in poverty) believed they should be recognized as "Cheraw," a name changed in 1934 by the secretary of the interior to "Siouan Indians of the Lumber River."

These events took place within a context of North Carolina's segregationist laws—starting with an 1835 revision to its constitution— to exclude "free people of color" from voting. Other white supremacist laws and movements resulted in the famous Lowry War, in which Henry Barry Lowry brought together a multiracial coalition in armed rebellion against white supremacists.

Malinda Maynor Lowrey's study focuses on the Jim Crow period, pointing out how Robeson County Indians often embraced segregation and distanced themselves socially from both white and black communities in an attempt to maintain peoplehood and assert nationhood. While segregation upheld white supremacy, Lowrey explains, it also acknowledged Robeson County Indians as a distinct people. A separate place within white supremacist laws—even as they constructed Indians as inferior to whites—was nevertheless seen as a way to maintain identity as a distinct People.

One of the many strengths of this text is Lowrey's unflinching and even-handed analysis of how Robeson County Indians distanced themselves from communities of African descent classified as "colored" in a context where being classified as "colored" would have jeopardized their distinct classification as Indian. Some Robeson County Indians also embraced the federal government's attempts to discern the "blood quantum" of Robeson County Indians through clearly racist (and often eugenicist) pseudoscience in an effort to be recognized as a nation. This process led to twenty-two Robeson County Indians from the Brooks Settlement—where people claim Tuscarora ancestry—to be classified as having "1/2 blood or more," and thus entitled to federal aid under the Indian New Deal. This group of Robeson County Indians and their descendants are now known as Tuscaroras rather than Lumbees. The name "Lumbee" emerged in the 1950s, both to make clear to the public that Robeson County Indians were not Cherokees and to unite the "Cherokee" and "Siouan" factions in a struggle to gain federal recognition. Lumbees were recognized as Indians by the federal government in 1956 through the passage of the Lumbee Act, which, while acknowledging Lumbees as a Native community, specifically disenfranchised Lumbees from recognition as a tribe. As of this writing, the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina is...