The expression “free, white, and twenty-one” goes again not less than a bit farther then 1854, when the primary by third editions of Alone (Richmond, Virginia: 1854), by Marion Harland (pen title of Mary Virginia Terhune) appear to have been printed. That incidence is the earliest occasion of the expression talked about in FumbleFingers’s reply.
The sensible sense of the expression is clear within the following longer wording, which embeds the gist of the expression. From “An Act to Amend the Acts Referring to the City of Georgetown,” in Acts of the Normal Meeting of the Commonwealth of Kentucky: Handed on the Session Which Was Begun and Held within the Metropolis of Frankfort, on Saturday the thirty first of December, 1853, and Ended Friday the tenth of March, 1854 (1854):
Be it enacted by the Normal Meeting of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, That part fourth an act to amend and scale back into one the a number of acts in relation to the city of Georgetown, accepted March 1st, 1847, be so amended as to learn as follows to-wit: That mentioned Chairman and Trustees shall be elected yearly, on the primary Saturday in January, by the free white inhabitants of mentioned city over the age of twenty one years, who shall have been bona fide residents of mentioned city for six months subsequent previous the election, and who shall have paid their ballot tax to mentioned city chargeable to them for the yr subsequent previous the election at which they declare to vote; additionally by the free white male inhabitants of Scott county, over the age of twenty one years, who shall be homeowners of actual property mendacity inside the limits of mentioned city. … Authorized March 1, 1854.
The language on this act relating to “free white male inhabitants of mentioned city” and “of Scott county” was the identical in part 4 of the 1847 act; the amended language of 1854 merely added the requirement about paying a ballot tax. In actual fact, the wording “free white male inhabitants over the age of twenty one years” seems a number of occasions in the 1847 Kentucky statutes.
A lot earlier, the identical conditions are talked about in “South Carolina” in A System of Geography; or, A Descriptive, Historic, and Philosophical View of the A number of Quarters of the World (Glasgow, 1805):
In South Carolina, as in different American States, the legislative energy is vested in a common meeting, consisting of a senate and a home of representatives. The variety of senators is 35; that of representatives 124. The representatives are chosen biennially. To be certified for this workplace, an individual should be a free white man, 21 years of age; should have been an inhabitant of the state three years, and, if he reside within the district for which he’s chosen, he should have a freehold away from debt to the quantity of 150 sterling. … To be entitled to the privilege of voting for members of the legislative physique, an individual should be a free white man, 21 years of age, should have been an inhabitant of the state two years, and should have been, for six months previous the election, possessed of a freehold of fifty acres of land, or loads in a city.
The earliest occasion of the precise expression “free, white and twenty-one” that I’ve discovered is from “The Proper Key,” an article initially printed within the Fredericksburg [Virginia] Recorder (September 3, 1845), reprinted in Niles’ Nationwide Register (Baltimore, Maryland: September 13, 1845):
Our attraction is to the individuals! We’re glad that editors might importune the legislature until the crack of doom, with out one particle of impact. The experiment has been tried often and ardently, however yet the humiliating reality will nonetheless stare us within the face that 58,000 of our individuals—”free, white and 21,”—can not write their title, or learn it when in print! Will the legislature attempt to treatment this monstrous evil? No; not till every member is made to really feel that his official existence relies upon upon his motion on this topic.
The truth that wording “free, white and 21” seems in citation marks means that the author was invoking a formulation that was already (in 1845) a well-recognized phrase—presumably one used to establish the conditions for having come of age and entered into the total rights of citizenship in Virginia at the moment.
The wording “free, white and 21 years of age” additionally seems in A Conservative, “Ideas on the Virginia Conference,” in The Jefferson Monument Journal (Charlottesville, Virginia: November 1850):
The following nice change which is proposed [for the Virginia state constitution], is to have common suffrage. If it does happen, we can have common degradation with it. Beneath the current system, Free-holders, Home-keepers and Lease-holders are voters, whose property could also be as little as $25 or a home 12 toes sq.. Now we confidently assert that any man who’s incapable of acquiring a vote beneath these situations, is unworthy of it. If he doesn’t possess that a lot psychological, ethical and bodily vitality, his vote would degrade the candidate, the workplace, and , if potential, himself. He’s unworthy the title of citizen, and mustn’t take part within the authorities. Suppose, for an occasion, that we gave each man who was free, white and 21 years of age, a proper to vote–what can be the consequence? The suffrages of the idle, indolent and ignorant can be as worthwhile, and in lots of circumstances counteract these of industrious, lively, and discovered.
From “Free Speech in Virginia” within the Norfolk[Virginia] Herald (circa November 1859) reprinted in Anti-Slavery Tracts, sequence 2, numbers 1–14 (1860):
The opposite [instance of a person committing the “indictable offence, punishable by fine and imprisonment, to give utterance to Abolition language and sentiments” in the state of Virginia] was that of a resident of Ferry Level, reverse town, John Fletcher by title, who got here from Washington Metropolis some 5 years in the past. On Tuesday final, within the grocery retailer of his neighbor, Mr. James P. Jones, within the presence of ten creditable witnesses, whereas in dialog in regards to the Harper’s Ferry affair, “he avowed himself an Abolitionist, and asserted that there have been many in Norfolk and Portsmouth, however that they had been afraid to say so; however he was free, white and twenty-one, and had no hesitation in declaring that if he had 5 thousand {dollars}, he would give one-half of it for the discharge or rescue of John Brown.”
And from “Communicated,” within the Alexandria [Virginia] Gazette (February 9, 1860):
At a gathering of a number of residents of Alexandria, held on the eighth prompt, composed of males, “free, white, and 21,” of enough intelligence to know their authorized privileges, and duties of residents, and of enough independence to take care of them, and never dependent, in any means, upon the current Administration, or professing to be its apologists or supporters, it was unanimously Resolved, That …
Nonetheless, the expression seems in some early contexts through which voter {qualifications} are clearly not the meant implication. From The Undercurrent, serialized in Scott’s Month-to-month Journal (Atlanta, Georgia: November 1868):
The morning classes of the youngsters are achieved, their books are ranged neatly on the alternative cabinets, they dismissed for his or her each day stroll with the nurse, and Lina is using the moments of their absence in jottings in her journal. We’ll look over her shoulder and skim as she writes:
“Immediately I full my twenty-first yr.
‘Free, white and twenty-one
My lady’s life scarce begun.’
Yet how previous and worn I’m starting to really feel beneath the strain of those each day cares, trials and disappointments.
Revisiting the wording in Alone (1854), we see that “free, white and twenty-one” is once more being “sung” by a feminine character:
“By no means worry,” mentioned Emma [to Ida]. “Your Richmond get together might eat it [all of the food being prepared] in every week. What number of are there?”
“Let me see! Arthur, Carry, and my pet—three—Mr. and Mrs. Dana, three youngsters, and Charley—9. They are going to be right here to-morrow evening—Ellen, Morris, Monday or Tuesday. I’ve invited Anna Talbot and Josephine,however don’t anticipate them. Then for Tuesday night—from the neighbourhood—Dr. Corridor and woman, and a pal, who shall be anonymous,” pinching Emma’s cheek—”the Strattons, Kingtons, Frenches,—and oh! I gave Charley a carte-blanche to ask any of my Richmond acquaintances—and all for what? To listen to that Miss Ida Ross is—”
“Free, white, and twenty-one” sang Emma, cheerily.
So if Emma in 1854 and Lina in 1868 are each both singing or quoting an precise track, it might be that “Free, white, and twenty-one” are lyrics from it.
Evaluation
Within the antebellum U.S. South, the privileges related to being “free, white, and twenty-one”—and male and a property proprietor, and (if relevant) a ballot tax payer—had been extensively understood to signify a authorized standing—that of an individual who possessed full citizenship: the rights to vote, to carry (some) political places of work, to serve on juries, to enter into binding contracts, to marry with out parental permission, to serve in a militia or different army group. The formulation appears to have been frequent sufficient to help its adoption as a idiomatic equal of “unbiased grownup with full rights as a citizen.”
Bartlett Whiting, Fashionable Proverbs and Proverbial Sayings (1989) cites cases of “free, white and twenty-one” as a proverbial phrase going again to 1932, in Cecil Gregg, The Physique Behind the Bar: A Story of Inspector Higgins: “She’s free, white, and twenty-one.” (Oddly sufficient, Gregg was a British author and this thriller novel was printed in London.) I could not discover a searchable copy of this novel on-line to verify the fuller context through which the expression seems.
As documented elsewhere on this reply, nonetheless, the phrase seems as a form of proverbial expression or descriptive shorthand lengthy earlier than 1932. A typical occasion is from “A Combating Kentuckian Meets Journey on the Western Entrance,” in The Literary Digest (March 16, 1918):
Of the various thrilling accounts of life within the trenches beneath hearth which have been printed within the final yr or two, none is extra vivid and stirring to the blood than the story of the expertise of a hardy son of the Blue Grass State who determined in October, 1915, that being free, white, and twenty-one, it was his manifest obligation to strike a blow for democracy. So he traveled in sizzling haste to Canada and enlisted within the Canadian Grenadier Guards.
Nonetheless, the expression in one thing near its later, aggressively selfish, unbeholden-to-anyone sense seems by the early Nineteen Twenties. One occasion the place the expression appears to be utilized in a strikingly pejorative means is in J.A. Dickey & E.C. Branson, “How Farm Tenants Stay in Mid-State Carolina,” in Dwelling and Farm Possession: North Carolina Membership 12 months-Ebook, 1921–22 (1923):
- Civic Consciousness. However there are comforting indicators of clever appreciation of the way-out in Baldwin and Williams townships. The straw poll taken within the fifty-one tenant households exhibits that solely seven of the ninety-nine voters had been against consolidated colleges, solely three had been against cooperative advertising and marketing, street bonds, or ‘guide farming,’ solely two thought faculty schooling a waste of time, and solely two thought-about themselves free, white, and twenty-one and privileged to do as they happy with out regard to morals, regulation and order. And mark this—of those ninety-nine voters, seventy-two are within the behavior of voting recurrently.
Equally—and even earlier, is that this occasion from Ruthella Bibbins, Mammy ‘mongst the Wild Nations of Europe (New York, 1904):
Every so often, as if to level Manny’s remarks, a celebration of Individuals sped by—some with the polished cosmopolitan method and well-groomed suitably dressed exterior which stamps the cultivated American, the world over. Others there have been, with the loud aggressive air, which the Professor says signifies: “Please notice I’m free, white, and twenty-one.” These are they whom one is glad one does not know; however, as Mr. Howells says, “gladder nonetheless to know they’re right here, discovering out how a lot they did not know earlier than.”
It thus seems that “free white and twenty-one” was for a substantial period of time within the first half of the 20th century a double-edged sword that might emphasize a (white) individual’s arrival at full and sober maturity or a (white) individual’s smug declare to unchecked autonomy, regardless if the consequences exercising that autonomy may need on others.
There may be additionally some suggestion that the expression was related to rustic or poorly educated individuals and never with refined city individuals. For instance, from Francis Smith, Kennedy Sq. (New York, 1911):
“However the subsequent one [dance] is mine,” exclaimed Harry immediately, inspecting his personal dancing-card. He had not shifted his place a hair’s breadth, nor did he intend to—though he had been outwardly well mannered to the intruder [Willits]
“Sure—they’d all be yours, Harry, in case you had your means,” this in a skinny, dry tone”—however you should not overlook that Miss Kate’s free, white, and twenty-one, and might do as she pleases.”
Harry’s lips straightened. He didn’t like Willits’s method an he was considerably shocked at his expression; it appeared to smack extra of the cabin than of the boudoir—particularly the boudoir of a princess like his treasured Kate.
The farther “free, white, and twenty-one” acquired from its roots within the Southern U.S. as an encapsulation of the most-favored-citizenship standing beneath regulation, the much less it turned about formal rights and tasks and the extra it turned merely a declaration of freedom to do as one happy. By the point it started showing in Hollywood films of the Nineteen Thirties, it appears to have develop into a nonregional catch phrase to point a headstrong (and generally reckless) perception in a single’s autonomy and self-sufficiency.
As an apart, I notice that I grew up on the sting of the Outdated South (in southeast Texas) within the Nineteen Sixties and Nineteen Seventies, and I by no means heard anybody use the expression “free, white, and twenty-one.” (I can not say the identical about sure different racially fatuous expressions resembling “that is mighty white of you.”) So it might be that this catch phrase was already obsolescent—not less than within the U.S. South—by the top of the Forties.