Alabama Cajans

The Alabama Cajans were an ethnic group of free Black, white, Creole, and possible Native American ancestry in colonial Alabama.^[1][4][7][8] They resided mostly in the counties of Mobile, Washington, and Clarke. They socially assorted apart from local whites and Black people, as a population isolate in the racial hierarchy of Alabama. "Cajan" was an exonym which members of these communities often considered pejorative.^[9] They instead referred to themselves as "Our People".^[1]

The Cajans were given their label by a local politician, but were unrelated to the Louisiana Cajuns. The MOWA Band of Choctaw Indians consists of a portion of their descendants, while others integrated into white communities, both local and distant.^{[1][4][10][9]}

Scholars generally consider the Cajans to have been an Alabama ethnic group of free Black, white, Creole, and possible Native American ancestry.^[7][4][1] The Reeds, Weavers, and Byrds were notable Cajan progenitor families.^[11][12]

The Reed family initially settled near Tibbie. Daniel Reed was locally described as a mixed-race man from the West Indies. He emancipated his wife, Rose Reed, a slave born in Mississippi, in 1818.^[1][9] Later on, Daniel emancipated three of their children.^[9][4] The Reeds were initially some of the only people listed as mulatto or colored on the 1840-1850 censuses in the Washington and Mobile counties.^[13]

The sons of Daniel and Rose Reed married the daughters of Jim and Dave Weaver.^[1] They were documented to have migrated to Alabama from the Putnam and Greene counties in Georgia, where they lived from 1810-1820.^[9] They migrated with Lemuel Byrd, who served in Putnam County and married their sister Anne Weaver.^[14][9] Byrd was recorded to have migrated from North Carolina to fight in the Indian Wars under Andrew Jackson.^[1][9] By the first half of the 20th century, census records indicate that these families had intermarried and rapidly expanded in number over the region.^[13]

Official records of the Cajans describe them in different ways at different times. Until the middle of the 20th century, the three families ancestral to the Cajans were described in official documents as free Black, mulatto, or free persons of color, with certain individuals listed as white.^[4][1]

In 1920, it was noted that the Weavers and Reeds had intermarried with four local white families, with one testimony claiming they had blood or marital connections with two-thirds of the local county.^[15]

In 1950, census enumerators were allowed to use local designations. In Washington County, one investigator found 734 people listed as Indian and 361 listed as "Cajun". Using surnames and assumed family relationships, he estimated that 288 people listed as white and 449 listed as Black were also of Cajan lineage in the county. In Mobile County, using similar methods but not the terms Cajan or Cajun, enumerators estimated that the majority identified as white. 737 people of Cajan heritage were listed as white, 137 as Black, and eighty-six as Indian.^[4]

By 1974, one of the families descended from the Reeds had mostly gained social acceptance among the white families of the area, and were marked white on an earlier census.^[4] By 1977, genetic and genealogical analysis suggested they had been outmarrying heavily compared to in the past.^[8] Others organized as the MOWA Band of Choctaw Indians or emigrated, assimilating into the dominant populations of urban areas.^[9][4]

The Cajans inhabited a region straddling the Counties of Mobile and Washington, it reached the hills of Mount Vernon and Citronelle to the south, and Tibbie and Mctintosh in the north.^[16][4] They were noted to be starkly different from the nearby Alabama Creoles and Louisiana Cajuns, given that they were mostly Protestant and had English names.^[17] They were seen to often live in inaccessible areas, forming small isolated communities.^[6][18]

Genealogical analysis suggests many of them emigrated from their initial tracts and assimilated into other populations by 1950.^[10] At one point, lumber industry interests near Cedar Creek had hired a white man, of Cajan ancestry, to keep genealogical records of the community's families via his personal contacts, which he used to expose Cajan children who attempted to enroll in white schools outside the community. Thereafter their families were forced to return to their isolated communities, preserving themselves as a labor pool.^[19]

By 1974, they were observed to have been frequently emigrating to nearby cities such as Mobile, New Orleans, and Houston. They were not seen as Black in these cities, and would marry into the dominant group of the area. Researcher Eugene Griessman notes that this outmigration and assimilation was mitigated by the high birthrate of the Cajans, and new families marrying into the isolate.^[4]

In 1920, Percy Reed, great-grandson of Rose Reed, was accused of miscegenation due to his marriage to a white woman. He denied having any black heritage.^[9][15] Percy said Rose had been Native American, and Reuben Reed said Rose's husband Daniel Reed had been Spanish. The judge had also described Percy as having Spanish and Native American heritage.^[9][15] Reed pointed out his sister's children went to white schools, but this did not convince the jury. Leslie Tucker noted this showed the difference in how race was defined by the community depending on the context.^[20]

The prosecution initially charged Reed based on descriptions of Rose, but this was later dismissed as hearsay on an appeal, and Reed's conviction was quashed.^[9][15] Political scientist Julie Novkov noted some Black Alabamans had attempted to escape segregation by claiming to have Native American ancestors rather than Black ones, giving Reed as an example.^[21]

In 1925, defending himself against miscegenation charges, Daniel Reed argued he was "Cajun", meaning a mix of "[Acadian], Indian, and Spanish" descent – although he did not have any Acadian heritage and was unrelated to the Louisiana Cajuns. This claim backfired, as the term "Cajun" was commonly associated with local population isolates of partial Black ancestry, and he was instead indicted for marrying a white woman.^[22] His conviction was later reversed on appeal.^[20]

While the cousins Daniel and Percy won their cases, their more distant relative Jim Weaver's conviction was upheld.^[20] In Weaver v. State, the Alabama court developed methodology to determine if a defendant was legally Black, via physical characteristics and social relations. This methodology observed whether they attended Black churches, sent their children to Black schools, and "voluntarily" lived in equality with Black people.^[15] Weaver had also claimed Native American heritage, but the court decided Weaver was guilty due to his relatives having appearances indicating Black ancestry.^[15]

Novkov stated that Weaver v. State set the guidelines for determining blackness in Alabama, and effectively removed the category of mulatto from the state, creating a binary racial system of white and Black.^[15]

By the 1930s, there were several similar mixed race communities – that identified more as Native American than Black, and were also usually identified as such by their neighbors – that were also impacted by the "one-drop rule" across the South, East and Midwest.^[15] By 1950, Census enumerators estimated that people of Cajan lineage in Washington County had marked themselves down as "Indian" more often than as the "Cajan", "White" or "Negro" categories individually, but in Mobile County the majority were classified as white.^[4]

They initially raised livestock, typically on small, unimproved tracts, then moved into the lumber, and later turpentine, industries.^[23][6] The Cajans were noted to speak in a unique patois.^[5] Like the nearby Redbones and Dominickers, they were known for distilling alcohol.^[24] Cajan boys were observed to not eat in the homes of others, or in front of girls from other settlements, sometimes not eating for multiple days. Due to this, older Cajan girls saved food for them to eat later.^[2] Cajan women were seen wearing bright colors, scarves around their hair, fashion jewelry, and more rouge than usual.^[6][25] Their society was noted to be similar to those of the nearby whites of the Upland South.^[26]

They received the name "Cajan" from the Alabama State senator, L.W. McRae.^[27] Being sensitive to the term "Cajan", they were observed to prefer referring to themselves simply as "Our people", a name also used by the Chestnut Ridge people.^[1][28] While some younger members of the group attempted to reclaim the name in the 1970s, with slogans such as "Cajan Power", and "Cajans are Beautiful", only a minority of the group had been recorded to identify as Cajan on the 1950 census.^[1][4]

Cajans, like African-Americans in the South, were seen to be devout believers in Conjure, and were observed to place objects ontop of their graves, such as shards of fine china, broken pitchers, or empty bottles, a common practice carried down from African antecedents.^[6][25][29] Believing in signs and "ha'nts", they wore "tricks" to repel diseases and bad luck.^[18][6]

They were mostly Baptists or Methodists, and by the 1970s many became involved in the Holiness movement, such that half of the pastors leading Holiness congregations in the area were Cajan, rather than white.^[1][25] They were observed to sing spirituals.^[30]

Cajans were seen to be reliant on the lumber and turpentine industries.^[31] Some Cajans were not noted to be wage-workers. They instead worked according to a broker system, such that they could only cut trees if given permission by local companies/landowners, and had to sell their lumber via a company representative present at the nearest railroad siding. Specific local Cajan men would be made brokers, who would receive cutting schedules and give representatives lists of available workers, who would be allowed to sell lumber at the siding. The brokers received commission on lumber sold by their recommended workers.^[32]

As a form of social allegiance, Cajan workers often intentionally lived near the broker whose list they were on, and voted according to their broker's opinions. At times, the fencing of their local broker enclosed their own property.^[33] Brokers acted as local foremen in their precinct, and encouraged their workers to vote for parties aligned with the interests of the local lumber companies.^[32]

By 1974, local industries also began to hire Cajans, offering them prosperity and mobility previously denied to them in the lumber industry most had been employed in. Many younger Cajans emigrated to work in areas outside the zone of Cajan settlement for new job offerings.^[26] The number of Cajans living near their brokers decreased as a result, lowering from 50% to 10% of newly-married couples between 1969 and 1970. The brokerage system had degraded heavily by 1971 as a result, and was later dissolved.^[33]

Local businessmen preferred to hire Cajans instead of Black people, which scholar G.H. Stopp suggested was to "ease the shock of forced integration" after civil rights legislation, as whites would have preferred other non-whites to Black people.^[34][35] He stated they acted as de facto whites in the workplace, while satisfying the de jure requirement of hiring Black people.^[33]

Cajans had their own missionary-founded school system by the 1930s, modelled as "special" white schools, due to standard white schools excluding a portion of them.^[36] Some Cajan children attending white schools were expelled after school staff saw their non-passing relatives attending school events.^[19]

For a period before the institution of Cajan schools, many Cajans received no or minimal schooling due to refusing to attend Black schools. In areas not served by Cajan schools, they went to Black schools if they could not pass as white.^[37] Cajans were noted to reject Black teachers from their schools, sometimes refusing to attend school if a Black teacher was sent by the school board, but were known to have previously allowed lighter skinned women to teach.^[25][1]

Some areas had Cajan deputy sheriffs, appointed in exchange for white sheriffs not patrolling the area regularly. They also handled Cajan cases from white areas.^[32] The separate Cajan schools and churches were noted to function as community centers for their settlements.^[26] The schools were noted to be underfunded, but improved over time, hiring more locals as teachers.^[4]

Social status among Cajans was noted to centre heavily around degree of alleged Black ancestry.^[8] Cajan school cohorts developed into unofficial "castes" over time, such that the attendees of different schools developed different ranked "sub-castes" relative to each other.^[1] Separate "neighborhoods" consisting of extended Cajan families surrounding and attending a specific school would sometimes not associate with Cajans attending other schools, preferring to maintain their own. Marriage between Cajans from different neighborhoods would be spoken of in terms of marrying "up" or "down" to a different sub-caste, depending on the relative status of the neighborhood in question.^[4]

By 1969, most Cajans went to desegregated schools, with only Reed Chapel and another school remaining as Cajan schools, both only serving elementary students by 1974.^[4][1] By this time, most students instead went to desegregated schools in McIntosh or Citronelle, improving their schooling conditions. The student body of these schools was mostly Black in McIntosh and mostly white in Citronelle.^[4]

The social status of the Cajans was noted to have surpassed that of local Black people post-desegregation, partially due to their improved schooling.^[4]

• Matte, Jacqueline Anderson (2018). They Say the Wind Is Red: The Alabama Choctaw - Lost in Their Own Land (Revised ed.). Montgomery: NewSouth Books. ISBN 978-1-58838-079-1.
• Miller, Mark Edwin (2013). Claiming Tribal Identity: The Five Tribes and the Politics of Federal Acknowledgment. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 978-0806143781.
• Price, Edward Thomas (1950). Mixed-blood Populations of Eastern United States as to Origins, Localizations, and Persistence. Berkley, United States of America: University of California. Retrieved 25 January 2026.
• Stopp, G. Harry (July 1976). "Cultural Brokers and Social Change in an American Peasant Community". Peasant Studies. 5 (3). University of Pittsburgh: 18–22. ISSN 0149-1547. Retrieved 9 March 2026.