A status is a legal or political condition recognized (or contesting recognition)
within a system of governance. It is granted, contested, or revoked by the State.
For example: Citizen, Refugee, Asylee, Immigrant, Veteran, Prisoner, etc these are
legal status
Guess what was a legal status? Slavery
A slave in U.S. law was a person held in perpetual servitude, owned by another,
and deprived of all civil, political, and natural rights, whose condition followed the
status of the mother (partus sequitur ventrem) and was enforceable under state
statutes and colonial codes.
Virginia Slave Code (1705) – “An Act Concerning Servants and Slaves”
“All Negro, mulatto, and Indian slaves within this dominion shall be held to be real
estate… and shall descend unto the heirs and widows of the owners.”
South Carolina Slave Code (1740) – Post-Stono Rebellion
“Slaves shall be deemed, held, taken, reputed, and adjudged in law to be chattels
personal in the hands of their owners… to all intents, constructions, and purposes
whatsoever.”
Louisiana Code Noir (1724, revised 1806)
“We declare the slaves to be movable property; they cannot possess any goods or
effects, nor dispose of them.”
U.S. Constitution (1787) Article I, Section 2, Clause 3 (Three-Fifths Compromise)
Counted enslaved persons as “three-fifths of all other Persons” for representation
and taxation, legally distinguishing them from citizens.
Article IV, Section 2 (Fugitive Slave Clause)
“No person held to service or labor in one state… escaping into another, shall… be
discharged from such service or labor.”
This legitimized the status of enslaved persons as legal property across state
lines. President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863 issued the Emancipation
Proclamation and it declared that all enslaved people in states or parts of states
still in rebellion against the United States were “thenceforward and forever free.”
Read that carefully over and over until you realize what it meant.
The Thirteenth Amendment (1865)
Date Ratified:
December 6, 1865
Full Text:
Section 1
“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime
whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United
States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
Section 2
“Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”
The 13th Amendment (1865) did the legal condition of “slave” cease to exist:
“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude… shall exist within the United States.”
However, that amendment abolished the status except as a punishment
(Neoslavery) not the lineage or the caste system that derived from it.
Thus, the Freedmen class became the legal successor to the slave status class.
Freedmen was a status for any person who was formerly enslaved. You were once
legally enslaved and now legally free, but not automatically equal to freeborn
citizens. Free Negro and Freedmen were separate legal categories until after 1865
After the 13th Amendment, all formerly enslaved persons in the U.S. became
Freedmen by law. This created the Freedmen’s Bureau (1865) to manage this new
class overseeing labor contracts, education, legal protection, and relief.
After 1868, Citizen Status was granted. The 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause
replaced Freedman status with citizenship status.
Now why I wrote all of this.
The phrase “American Descendants of Slavery” is legally hollow because “slavery”
was an amended condition. It is not a lineage it is a status. American Descendant of Slavery is narrow while not clarified just as American Descendant of Freedmen. This is equivalent to American Descendant of Veterans (Recognized by the VA) or American Descendant of Immigration. Neither “veteran” nor “slave” creates a heritable legal identity. Both are non-transferable conditions tied to individual experience. Once the condition ends (by death, discharge, or abolition) the law no longer
recognizes it as an active category. Thus You can descend from a veteran or a slave but you cannot inherit their legal status because that status never existed as a transferrable right. In contrast, the Freedmen class was a recognized successor group, meaning the law explicitly acknowledged
“These are the people once enslaved and now freed and they and their
descendants are subjects of federal concern.”
Free Negro and Freedmen were merged into the Freedmen status and that was
replaced with the Negro classification.
ADOS is a distortion and a very clever legal trick because in American legal
language
“American Descendant of Slavery” is linguistically evocative but juridically void.
It names a moral inheritance and not a legal identity.
For constitutional or reparative purposes, the operative and enforceable lineage
remains that of the Freedmen class established after 1865 which became the
Negro Classification.
For a true sovereign model, status must serve lineage, not replace it. The status
(like ADOS) should be the legal expression of the lineage thus the lineage defines
the people while the status defines their political standing. Lineage gives you
identity, Status gives you Rights/Privileges.
The critical error of ADOS is that it grounds its legal identity in an abolished
condition (“slavery”) instead of a recognized status (“Freedmen”), severing its
claims from constitutional lineage, jurisdictional standing, and enforceable federal
obligation.
I wonder why they didn’t choose AFD (American Freedmen Descendant) ???
American (adj./n.) —
“American” refers to a person or entity belonging to, owing allegiance to, or under
the jurisdiction of the United States of America.
The term is not itself a legal status, but a national designation that derives its
meaning from citizenship, nationality, or domicile under U.S. law.
— Black’s Law Dictionary, 11th ed.; 8 U.S.C. § 1101 (Immigration and Nationality
Act); and constitutional interpretation.
Descendant (n.) —
A person who is related to another by blood in a direct line; one who proceeds
from the body of an ancestor, such as a child, grandchild, great-grandchild, and so
forth to the remotest degree.
— Black’s Law Dictionary, 11th ed.; Ballentine’s Law Dictionary; U.S. Code usage.
Slavery (n.) —
A civil condition in which one human being is owned as property by another, and is
subject to the will, control, and disposal of the owner.
The enslaved person is deprived of legal personhood, civil rights, and freedom of
action, being regarded in law as chattel (movable property).
— Black’s Law Dictionary (11th ed.); Ballentine’s Law Dictionary; historical statutes.
American Descendant of Slavery =
A person under U.S. jurisdiction who is the lineal descendant of individuals
formerly held in the abolished civil condition of slavery.
However “Slavery” is a condition/status not a lineage source. The correct terminology would’ve been
American Freedman Descendant. A person under the jurisdiction of the United States who is a direct lineal descendant of those recognized as Freedmen under federal law following the
abolition of slavery. ADOS is void. After 1868, The Freedmen class ceased to exist as a special legal status and was absorbed into U.S. citizenship. However, federal and state bureaucracies
continued to distinguish these citizens by race for administrative and political
purposes. The term Negro became the legal placeholder for all persons whose ancestry
traced to the Freedmen or formerly enslaved populations.
The American Negro
This is why census enumerators, marriage registrars, and military documents used
“Negro” as a classification of lineage origin.
The American Negro became The Black American
