“As White as Most White Women”: Racial Passing in Advertisements for Runaway Slaves and the Origins of a Multivalent Term

Abstract

In 1731 a man named Gideon Gibson, along with several of his relatives, emigrated from Virginia to South Carolina. At first it was reported with consternation that Gibson was a free black man married to a white wife. 1 However, when the South Carolina House of Assembly took up an investigation of Gibson, then governor Robert Johnson concluded that the Gibson family were "not Negroes nor Slave but Free people." 2 The Gibsons were allowed to remain in the colony, and they prospered, eventually purchasing 450 acres of prime South Carolina land; Gibson owned black slaves, and his sister married a wealthy planter. Gideon Gibson's son married a white woman and himself became the owner of at least seven slaves. It would be forty-five more years before the colonies declared independence from Britain, but it seems the Gibsons had already declared themselves free from the social, legal, or ideological codes that would construct them as black, Negro, or mulatto. Another investigation in 1768 revealed that Gideon Gibson, Jr., "escaped the penalties of the negro law by producing upon comparison more red and white in his face than could be discovered in the faces of half the descendants of … [the House of Assembly]." 3 Gideon Gibson, Jr., was judged to have been passing for white; he was in actuality a very light-skinned black man with black ancestors. 4 Yet he was also a slave owner and a prosperous member of South Carolinian society.

Ethnic identity concealment and disclosure: Contexts and strategies

“…Here, the issue is less to do with disclosing personal information to supportive others and more to do with the everyday negotiation of hierarchy and the derogation of one's community. One strategy is identity concealment: Light‐skinned escaped slaves in the US antebellum period sought to avoid capture through passing as white (Cutter, 2016; Hobbs, 2014; Khanna & Johnson, 2010). This strategy continued into the 20th century and was a prominent feature in US fiction (e.g., James Weldon Johnson's The Autobiography of an Ex ‐ Colored Man , 1912).…”