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The November 1866 meeting of African Americans at Hammond’s Hill in Edgecombe County is well documented. Hammond’s Hill, eight miles south of Enfield, was named for Levi and Mary Hammond, free people of color, who lived there since 1830. It is now known as Red Hill.
The meeting was an outgrowth of the October 1866 Freedmen’s Convention in Raleigh and part of a broad movement among formerly enslaved men and women to overcome the enduring legacy of slavery; the meeting resulted in formation of an Equal Rights League. The League is used as a touchstone by historians discussing the intense African American struggle for full citizenship following legislation designed to limit citizenship of African Americans in North Carolina. It is the most thoroughly documented Equal Rights League in post-Civil War North Carolina.
The Hammond’s Hill Equal Rights League connected local African American political agency to the larger struggle for full citizenship in post-Civil War North Carolina and the United States. The New Bern North Carolina Times newspaper published a notice requesting “Freedmen” to organize mass meetings to select delegates to attend a “Freedmen’s Convention” in Raleigh set for a similar timeframe as Holden’s called Convention; the Freedmen’s Convention started just before the other convention in late September 1865. Various counties held such meetings, including Edgecombe County. The Edgecombe County meetings were held at Tarboro, where as many as 1500 African Americans attended. In four separate meetings in mid-September 1865, the Tarboro assemblage selected delegates to attend the Freedmen’s Convention in Raleigh later that same month. On September 16, 1865, the Tarboro group passed resolutions, including one against taxation without representation.
Statewide elections held in November 1865 returned pre-Civil War white political power to office. Soon followed a series of legislative acts that limited the citizenship of African Americans in North Carolina. These acts denied African Americans the right to vote, prohibited them from testifying against whites in court, prohibited interracial marriages, prevented Blacks from owning guns, and allowed young Blacks to be apprenticed to former enslavers. The acts mandated execution of African Americans convicted of rape or attempted rape of a white woman. Labor laws entrenched conditions favorable to the employer not the employee. The acts established county militias, like the former slave patrols, to enforce the laws.
African Americans organized the second Freedmen’s Convention in October 1866 to bring their concerns about these Black Codes to the General Assembly at Raleigh. They invited prominent state officials to speak at the convention, many of whom made polite excuses to not attend. Governor Jonathan Worth however did accept the invitation and spoke at the gathering. Representatives of the Convention spoke to the General Assembly directly and were cordially received.
The Freedmen’s Convention adopted a series of resolutions denouncing the apprenticing of their children, objecting to their taxation without representation, giving their support to the actions of the 39th U.S. Congress (including the 14th Amendment), and calling for attendees to organize an Equal Rights League in their area when they returned home. The convention also resolved that the people should form an auxiliary league to gather stories of violence committed against African Americans and report those to an office in Raleigh, which in turn would report it to newspapers and other proper authorities. The second Convention had delegates from Edgecombe County, including Frank Hart, who would become a leader of the League at Hammond’s Hill.
Military drilling at Hammond’s Hill related to a larger movement in African Americans for self-defense. In addition to organizing for better wages and working to establish schools for their children, African Americans sought to protect themselves from the attacks of former enslavers. Such drilling and the adoption of military titles and paraphernalia helped forge connections while providing some security. All of these actions demonstrated the people’s agency and determination for civil rights.
Six months after the Hammond’s Hill meeting, there was a celebration in Tarboro with twenty-five hundred African Americans in attendance. This event announced the establishment of the Union League in Edgecombe County. The mass mobilization and military-style drilling and the successful organization of the League distinguished the Edgecombe County area as a center of Black political power for decades.
References:
Minutes of the Freedmen's Convention, Held in the City of Raleigh, on the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th of October 1866 (Raleigh, 1866), available at https://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/freedmen/freedmen.html.
William C. Harris, “Black Codes,” (2006), available at https://www.ncpedia.org/black-codes
H. G. Jones, “Freedmen’s Conventions,” (2006), available at https://www.ncpedia.org/freedmens-conventions
Roberta Sue Alexander, North Carolina Faces the Freedmen: Race Relations During Presidential Reconstruction, 1865-1867, 1985.
David Cecelski¸ The Fire of Freedom: Abraham Galloway & the Slaves’ Civil War, 2012.
Stephen Hanh, A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration, 2003.
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