Alabama Cajans

The Alabama Cajans, sometimes spelled Cajuns, were a historic group of communities, described as having varying degrees of ancestry from free Black people, whites, Alabama Creoles, Redbones, and possible Native Americans. They historically resided in the counties of Mobile, Washington, and Clarke within Alabama. They socially assorted apart from Black Alabamians but were classified as non-white and excluded from white schools.

The name Cajan was an exonym created by a local politician to distinguish them from other ethnic groups, such as the freedmen emancipated after the Civil War and the Alabama Creoles. They were unrelated to the Louisiana Cajuns. Members of these communities often considered the name pejorative, and sometimes referred to themselves as "a peculiar people" instead.

Their descendants variously integrated into white communities, began identifying as Black, retired the term Cajan and expressed MOWA Choctaw identity, or reclaimed the Cajan identity for themselves. Some now reside in Mississippi.

History Groups considered Cajan are described as having varying amounts of Black, white, and possible Native American ancestries. They are typically descended from free Black and Alabama Creole communities who intermarried with whites. They are also described to intermarry with Redbones. They were culturally different from the nearby Alabama Creoles and Louisiana Cajuns.

Cajans inhabited a hilly region straddling the counties of Mobile, Washington, and Clarke, labelled by locals as Cajan Country. They often lived in backcountry areas such as woodlands or swamps, forming small isolated communities. They worked in the lumber and turpentine industries.

Initial settlements (1818 – 1840s)

The Reeds, Weavers, and Byrds were described as historic Cajan families. Scholars Eugene Griessman and Curtis Henson suggested the Cajan surname alluded to Creole ancestry. Surnames classified as Cajan indicated Scots-Irish ancestry, rather than French-Canadian.

The Cajans are written to begin with the marriage of Daniel and Rose Reed, who initially settled near Tibbie in Washington County. Daniel emancipated Rose from slavery in 1818, and later emancipated three of their children. They eventually had eight in total. The Reeds were the only free family of color residing permanently in Washington County during the Antebellum era.

Lemuel Byrd migrated from North Carolina to fight in the Indian Wars under Andrew Jackson. Griessman and Henson suggested his wife Anna was related to two Weavers claiming to be from Georgia, who were in Mobile County ten years before Byrd arrived there.

Land acquisitions (1830s–1890s) Though the Cajans were of poor economic status, they owned land in significant quantities. In 1836, the Reed family received 39.95 acres of land within the county. By 1849, they owned 117 acres via later purchases.

Cajan families obtained more land via expansions of the Homestead Acts from the 1860s to mid-1870s, which widened the settlement area of the Cajans to its 20th century boundaries. Later generations of the Reed family obtained more land to the south and east via homestead grants, totaling 1700 acres by the 1880s-1890s. The land was initially used for cattle grazing, then as a source of lumber. Lumber from the area was used for logs, naval stores, and pulpwood later in the century.

Institution of segregation (1925 – 1931)

In 1925, defending himself against miscegenation charges, a Daniel Reed argued he was "Cajun", meaning a mix of "[Acadian], Indian, and Spanish" descent – although he did not have any Acadian heritage and was unrelated to the Louisiana Cajuns. Scholar Christophe Landry writes this was counterproductive, as the term "Cajun" was commonly associated with local population isolates of partial Black ancestry. Daniel was indicted for marrying a white woman.

Cajan attempts to enroll their children in white schools were viewed by local whites as attempts to desegregate schooling in the area. Thus whites enacted legal measures, via multiple court hearings against Cajans attempting to enroll. This created the precedent for defining Cajans as , and they were automatically rejected from white schools afterwards. Some observers described the Cajans to be economically worse off than African-Americans at this time.

Segregated school system

Cajans had their own missionary-founded school system by the 1930s, due to standard white schools excluding a portion of them. They had previously been often unchurched.

For a period before the institution of Cajan schools, many Cajans received little or no schooling due to refusing to attend Black schools. Some children attending white schools were expelled after school staff discovered their relation to people labelled Cajan. In areas not served by Cajan schools, some went to Black schools in the early 19th century if they could not pass as white. Later on, Cajans were recorded refusing to attend schools with Black teachers, although lighter-skinned Black women were accepted at least as late as 1931. One such case was recorded in 1920.

The schools were underfunded, and in some cases several grades would be taught in the same classroom. In 1931, African-American historian Horace Mann Bond conducted the first academic report on the group, titled "Two Racial Islands in Alabama", wherein he performed a comparative study between them and Alabama Creoles living in Magnolia Springs. Bond recorded their students had lower scores on the Stanford Achievement Test than African-Americans or Alabama Creoles.

Segregation period (1931 – 1969)

Carl Carmer visited Cajans settled near Citronelle when researching for his 1934 novel, .

A series of life histories by the Federal Writer's Project documented Isaac Johnson (Jake Gaw), a Cajan in Washington County, later described as a poor white by scholar Wayne Flynt. Living along the Tombigbee River, he worked as a turpentiner in a secondary forest. His father had previously acquired 40 acres of farmland due to working in an old growth forest. The turpentine economy underwent depression during Isaac's career, and sawmills which used to employ him had closed. By the 1930s, his cabin lacked windowpanes, but his white wife was able to supplement his income by teaching in a Cajan school.

Social stratification

Communities described as Cajan were described by successive researchers in the 20th century as mixed-race people socially delineated from Black Alabamians, but lacking acceptance from local whites. William S. Pollitzer et al. observed that status was centered on one's apparent degree of Black ancestry.

Local Cajan communities did not necessarily identify with other groups designated as Cajan. They identified with separate "neighborhoods" of extended families that surrounded a specific school and would sometimes not associate with Cajans attending other schools. Marriage between Cajans from different neighborhoods would be spoken of in terms of marrying "up" or "down", depending on the relative status of the neighborhood in question.

Property and labor arrangements

Landholding rights in the community were kept intact by a specific system of land tenure. Landowners, rather than transferring titles, instead informed the tax assessor that they would take over payments for the land of their parents. Thus parcels were sometimes under the name of long deceased ancestors of a family. Cajans were 12% more likely to own their homes than other residents of Alabama, however the homes were of lower quality than those of whites on average.

Scholar G.H. Stopp documented a broker system in the community of Cedar Creek. Cajuns in this system could only cut trees if listed by brokers, who were local Cajan men. At the local railroad siding, brokers received cutting schedules from logging company representatives. These brokers gave representatives lists of available workers, who would only be allowed to sell lumber at the nearest siding. The brokers received commission on lumber sold by their recommended workers.

Cajan workers at Cedar Creek often intentionally lived near their patron broker, and at times the broker's fencing enclosed their own property. Brokers acted as local foremen in their precinct, and successfully guided their workers to vote according to local lumber company interests. Cajans had to buy all of their logging equipment on credit at noncompetitive prices. Stopp wrote they had low credit risk, as payments on the equipment were subtracted from their own pay.

Efforts by locals to maintain segregation Historian Clement Eaton interviewed the state archivist of Alabama, who expressed her desire to research family lines near Mobile for Cajan ancestry, to properly identify them. Decades later, several individuals had compiled records on the genealogy of major Cajan families, with four possessing records specifically on the Reeds. Scholars Curtis Henson and Eugene Griessman propose this was due to Jim Crow era laws mandating the societal exclusion of people with African ancestry. They suggest the ability of light-skinned Cajans to pass the color line led people to document them more carefully, to prevent their integration.

At one point, lumber industry interests near Cedar Creek had hired a white-passing Cajan from Mt. Vernon to keep genealogical records of the community's families via his personal contacts. He used these records to reveal Cajan children who attempted to enroll in white schools outside the community. Thereafter their families were forced to return to their isolated communities, preserving themselves as a guaranteed labor pool.

Cultural documentation

Folklorist Simon J. Bronner writes that while scholar Robert Redfield's sociocultural-based definition of a peasant community is typically used for Asian, African, and European societies, scholar G.H. Stopp used the concept to describe the folk culture of the Cajans.

Writers for the Works Progress Administration reported women in the community wore bright colors, scarves around their hair, fashion jewelry, and more rouge than usual. Stopp and scholar Carol W. Hill wrote that Cajan men preferred to marry mulatto women, while Cajan women preferred to marry white men. They were as a group seen to be avoidant of others.

Cajans were mostly Baptists or Methodists. Writers from the WPA described them to be believers in "ha'nts" and conjure, similarly to African-Americans in the Black Belt.

Historical identities

The name Cajan was an exonym, created by the Alabama State senator L.W. McRae in 1885. They considered the term pejorative. A minority of Cajans identified with the exonym in a 1950 survey.

On the 1950 United States census, enumerators were allowed to use local designations. In Washington County, one investigator found 734 people listed as Indian and 361 listed as Cajun. Using surnames and assumed family relationships, he estimated that 288 people listed as white and 449 listed as Black were also of Cajan lineage in the county. In Mobile County, using similar methods but not the term Cajan, enumerators estimated that the majority identified as white.

Cajans were often reminded of their African ancestry when around white people, but had other identities within their own communities, such as Mexican and, less frequently, Indian. Some Cajans self-identified as Black in official records.

Modern developments

By 1969, most of the community went to desegregated schools. Only Reed Chapel and another school remained as Cajan schools, and both only served elementary students by 1974. An African-American was teaching at one of them by this time. Most students instead went to schools in McIntosh, Mt. Vernon, or Citronelle, improving their schooling conditions. The student body of these schools was mostly Black in McIntosh and mostly white in Citronelle.

Career opportunities