Free black adaptive responses to the antebellum urban environment: Neighborhood formation and socioeconomic stratification in Alexandria, Virginia, 1790-1850

The role of residence as a response to competition and conflict is explored through hypothesis tests formulated to define variation within the free black population. Documentary data are used to describe this population and to identify free black residential areas and patterning related to socioeconomic rank differences. Historical factors considered include the changing role of legal sanctions imposed on free blacks, race-related social unrest, benevolent societies, abolitionist, and colonization movements, and schools and churches in Washington, D.C. and Alexandria. The methodology consisted of a one hundred percent survey of the tax and census records and information was collected for 632 free black household heads on twenty-nine spatial, social, and economic variables. This approach is directed toward future use in preservation planning and the archaeological investigation of neighborhoods in the city. The first hypothesis tests whether differences in the socioeconomic ranks within the free black population correlate significantly with variables that may represent increased or decreased opportunity in an urban environment. Differences in socioeconomic rank were found to correlate with presence of household in an alley, presence of boarders in a household, and gender of the household head. Differences in the year and ward of residence and color and literacy level of household heads were not associated with differences in socioeconomic rank. Seven post hoc auxiliary hypotheses were generated from the results of Hypothesis 1 and a descriptive analysis of the data set. Hypothesis 2 postulates that in situations of population increase and intergroup conflict the majority of free black residential areas in any given time period will exhibit heterogeneous clustering with regard to the variables occupational opportunity, tenure, and socioeconomic status. The results show that free black households are more apt to segregate themselves by levels of occupational opportunity and tenure regardless of time period. However, as the antebellum period progresses free black residential areas are composed of household heads from the entire range of the socioeconomic hierarchy. Although each residential area has a unique evolution, their development in Alexandria reinforced free black group identity and security in an uncertain antebellum environment.