A Dark Closet

...It will come as a shock for most readers that there have existed in this country from pre-revolutionary times communities of people who have been kept by their neighbors and by government at all levels from full participation in American society because of superstitious fears of their origins...

...In our earliest census records, these are the people listed as "others...

...in the absence of a hard to achieve and expensive court order, they are denied admittance to any high school or to any form of higher education...

...The majority still fight for and are slowly winning a white status...

...Substandard, special elementary schools for these groups still exist in several counties of South Carolina...

...Berry's study indicates that a few of these groups have accepted a status as Negroes...

...In spite of the variety of names associated with these people, Berry believes that their existence can be traced to a common origin...

...In some instances, since it has been the family name which has carried with it the inferior status, a change of name has accomplished the removal of the cloud...

...From personal experience in representing one such group in the attempt first to integrate themselves into the white school system and then to tear away all of the other remaining barriers that have kept them from full community participation, I can underscore Berry's portrayal of the personal tragedy of these people...

...In this, he has pioneered in a rich field of native American anthropology...

...So far at least, these unfortunate members of a minority group have not been able to overcome the handicap of racial stigma in spite of their victories in such specific fields...

...He calls them all "mestizos" and believes that they are scattered remnants of Indian tribes and sub-tribes who from early times had lost their Indian culture and had adopted the dominant white cultures in the place they found themselves...

...Reviewed by Ira Kaye Tn this slim, readable volume, Brew-ton Berry has left the academic halls of Ohio State University, where he is chairman of the department of sociology and anthropology, to open a dark closet for a lay audience...

...They are known as the Jackson-Whites or Bushwackers in New York and New Jersey, Moors or Nan-ticoke Indians in Delaware, Wesorts in Maryland, Dominickers or Guineas in the Virginias, Lumbee Indians, Croatans, Smilings, Haliwas, Portuguese or Cubans in North Carolina, Turks, Brass Ankles, Red Bones, Buckheads or Summerville Indians in South Carolina, Melungeons in Tennessee, or by dozens of other names in several other states...

...There is need for more intensive study of several of these communities, since they are a living laboratory of many sociological and anthropological problems...

...In every such instance, the school is an unaccredited, poorly equipped and staffed affair...

...Although residents in the areas for generations, they, because of the "mysterious" nature of their origin, have been forcibly kept unschooled or improperly schooled and, for the most part, have been forced to wage a relentless battle for both status and identity...

...In spite of harsh, rigid, and all inclusive miscegenation statutes in South Carolina, the "mestizos" there have no legal difficulty in marrying white partners...

...For the most part, however, early in the Nineteenth Century these communities were set and tagged by the outside world and their battle for status began in earnest...

...In many areas, particularly in the South, this battle is still being fought...

...We learn that pocketed in valleys, fringes of swamp lands, and other isolated areas east of the Mississippi are small communities of citizens known usually by derogatory local names...

...In short, the experience of these people is proof of the complete irrationality of race relations in this country...

...When we realize that in pre-Fifteenth amendment times, even in many Northern states, free Negroes were not allowed to vote and Indians were under harsh legal handicaps, this battle for acceptance as whites was nothing less than a battle for survival as a citzen and as a person...

...Several others, notably the Lumbee Indians of North Carolina, the Nanticoke Indians of Delaware, and the Narragansett Indians of Rhode Island have been recognized as Indian tribes...

...In many instances, this has meant pulling up stakes, leaving areas where their people have resided for two hundred years, and moving to an area where they are not known...

...Through marriage they accepted as part of their own communities stray and nondescript whites and, occasionally, runaway slaves...

...It is no wonder then that the major efforts of these people should be directed toward their acceptance as whites and conversely to fight any effort to classify them as Negro...

...They may provide a clue to the efficacy of the theory that assimilation or voting rights is the answer to the race problem...

...Insofar as the Turks are concerned, the white partner has suddenly found himself to be classified as Turk when the birth certificate of a child of a Turk-white marriage is prepared at the local board of vital statistics...

...Even in an enlightened state such as North Carolina, there still exists a Portuguese school, a Haliwa school, a Smiling school, and nine other so-called "special" schools for the "mestizos...