Black Confederate Pensioners

White Flint Bill

Sergeant
Joined
Oct 9, 2017
Location
Southern Virginia
I visited the Museum and Archives of Rockingham County (North Carolina) last week and saw the reference below. Curious, I did a little research this morning and discovered an article in the journal of the Mississippi Historical Society on the subject of Black Confederate Pensioners (linked below).

Here's an excerpt from the article:

Although Confederate pensions were limited initially to disabled veterans, it was not long before eligibility was expanded to include veterans who were poor and in need. North Carolina and Florida led the way in 1885, and by 1898 all of the states that had seceded from the Union offered pensions to indigent Confederate veterans. Missouri and Kentucky followed suit in 1911 and 1912, respectively. These states, with the exception of Missouri, also extended coverage to indigent widows of veterans, as long as they did not remarry.

African Americans who had served with the Confederate army were not included – except in Mississippi, which had included African Americans in the state’s pension program from its beginning in 1888. It was not until 1921 that another state extended the eligibility for pensions to African Americans who had served as servants with the Confederate army. Unfortunately, black southerners who applied for Confederate pensions in the 1920s were, for the most part, very old men. Consequently, the number of black pensioners was small compared to the large number of Confederate veterans in the states that had allowed for pensions decades earlier. For example, Mississippi, which was the only state to include African Americans from its program’s beginning in 1888, had 1,739 black pensioners; North Carolina, which first offered pensions in 1927 had 121; South Carolina, which first offered pensions in 1923, had 328; Tennessee, which first offered pensions in 1921, had 195; and Virginia, which first offered pensions in 1924, had 424 black pensioners.
Here's the reference at the Museum (typos and all).
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Here is a link to Mr. Miller's pension application: http://cdm16062.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p16062coll21/id/93982

And here's the link to the brief article on black pensioners in Mississippi: http://www.mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov/articles/289/black-confederate-pensioners-after-the-civil-war
 
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