The Dominickers are a small biracial or

triracial Mixed race people are people of more than one race or ethnicity. A variety of terms have been used both historically and presently for mixed race people in a variety of contexts, including ''multiethnic'', ''polyethnic'', occasionally ''bi-eth ...

ethnic group that was once centered in the

Florida Panhandle The Florida Panhandle (also West Florida and Northwest Florida) is the northwestern part of the U.S. state of Florida; it is a salient roughly long and wide, lying between Alabama on the north and the west, Georgia on the north, and the G ...

county of Holmes, in a corner of the southern part of the county west of the

Choctawhatchee River The Choctawhatchee River is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline data. The National Map , accessed 15 April 2011 river in the southern United States, flowing through southeast Alabama and the Panhandle o ...

, near the town of

Ponce de Leon Ponce may refer to: * Ponce (surname) * * Ponce, Puerto Rico, a city in Puerto Rico ** Ponce High School ** Ponce massacre, 1937 * USS ''Ponce'', several ships of the US Navy * Manuel Ponce, a Mexican composer active in the 20th century * Britis ...

. The group was classified in 1950 as one of the "reputed Indian-White-Negro racial isolates of the Eastern United States" by the

United States Census Bureau The United States Census Bureau (USCB), officially the Bureau of the Census, is a principal agency of the U.S. Federal Statistical System, responsible for producing data about the American people and economy An economy is an area of th ...

. Few facts are known about their origins, and little has been published about this group.

First mention and origins

The first known mention in print of the Dominickers is an article in ''Florida: A Guide to the Southernmost State'', published by the

Federal Writers' Project The Federal Writers' Project (FWP) was a federal government project in the United States created to provide jobs for out-of-work writers during the Great Depression. It was part of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a New Deal program. It w ...

in 1939. The article "Ponce de Leon" identifies the Dominickers as being

mixed-race Mixed race people are people of more than one race or ethnicity. A variety of terms have been used both historically and presently for mixed race people in a variety of contexts, including ''multiethnic'', ''polyethnic'', occasionally ''bi-eth ...

descendants of the widow of a pre-

Civil War A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government polic ...

plantation owner and one of her black slaves, by whom she had five children. (A separate oral tradition has it that the slave was the mixed-race or

mulatto (, ) is a racial classification to refer to people of mixed African and European ancestry. Its use is considered outdated and offensive in several languages, including English and Dutch, whereas in languages such as Spanish and Portuguese ...

half-brother of the woman's deceased husband, but this has not been verified. In that account the half-brother's mother had been enslaved.) The unsigned article said that numerous descendants still lived in the area at the time of writing. Their children were required to attend a segregated school (as required by Florida's

Jim Crow laws The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Other areas of the United States were affected by formal and informal policies of segregation as well, but many states outside the Sou ...

). Dominickers were not accepted as social equals by the white community, but they kept themselves apart from the main black community. The Dominickers formed a small middle layer of Holmes County society separate from both whites and blacks (somewhat analogous to the status of

free people of color In the context of the history of slavery in the Americas, free people of color (French: ''gens de couleur libres''; Spanish: ''gente de color libre'') were primarily people of mixed African, European, and Native American descent who were not ...

, the

Louisiana Creoles Louisiana Creoles (french: Créoles de la Louisiane, lou, Moun Kréyòl la Lwizyàn, es, Criollos de Luisiana) are people descended from the inhabitants of colonial Louisiana before it became a part of the United States during the period of bo ...

before the United States purchase of the Louisiana Territory). According to the article, the appearance of Dominickers varied from very fair (white) to "Negroid" (black), even among the siblings of a single family. The nickname "Dominickers", taken as

pejorative A pejorative or slur is a word or grammatical form expressing a negative or a disrespectful connotation, a low opinion, or a lack of respect toward someone or something. It is also used to express criticism, hostility, or disregard. Sometimes, a ...

, was said to come from a local man in a divorce case describing his estranged wife as "black and white, like an old Dominicker chicken." Another account says the description was applied, instead, to the man with whom she was living after she left her husband.

Further sources

Two unpublished typescripts prepared for the FWP Florida guidebook, but not included in it, are archived at the

University of Florida The University of Florida (Florida or UF) is a public land-grant research university in Gainesville, Florida. It is a senior member of the State University System of Florida, traces its origins to 1853, and has operated continuously on its ...

library in Gainesville. They were likely sources or drafts of the published article. These typescripts go into further detail than the published article on the appearance and behavior of the Dominickers, saying that the local people described them as "sensitive, treacherous, and vindictive" and "pathetically ignorant." The men are described as "big and burly looking," known for their skill at breaking horses and making

moonshine Moonshine is high-proof liquor that is usually produced illegally. The name was derived from a tradition of creating the alcohol during the nighttime, thereby avoiding detection. In the first decades of the 21st century, commercial dist ...

whiskey. The women were described as "low in stature, fat, and shapeless," wearing loose clothing and going

barefoot Barefoot is the state of not wearing any footwear. There are health benefits and some risks associated with going barefoot. Shoes, while they offer protection, can limit the flexibility, strength, and mobility of the foot and can lead to ...

all the time. One article notes that Dominickers were "treated with the same courtesy that a Negro receives—never served at a public fountain nor introduced to a white person." A few Dominicker children were allowed to attend the white high school in Westville, but they were "never allowed to actually graduate." In contrast to these descriptions, photographs of known Dominickers from the late 19th and early 20th centuries show that their appearance ranged from fair-complected to swarthy, but not "Negroid," as claimed; the women, especially, seem to have had an olive-skinned, wavy-haired "Mediterranean" look. A later academic writer, a native of the area, states, "Most of these people are Spanish or Cuban in appearance."

Native American ancestry

The typescripts give five different accounts of the Dominickers' origins, which are said to include Euchee Indian ancestors. There may have originally been several distinct mixed-race families in the area, with various combinations of white, black, and Indian ancestry, whose descendants intermarried. Eventually they were all considered Dominickers. One typescript says, "they are about three-fourths

white White is the lightness, lightest color and is achromatic (having no hue). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully diffuse reflection, reflect and scattering, scatter all the ...

and one-eighth

Negro In the English language, ''negro'' is a term historically used to denote persons considered to be of Black African heritage. The word ''negro'' means the color black in both Spanish and in Portuguese, where English took it from. The term can be ...

and one-eighth

Indian Indian or Indians may refer to: Peoples South Asia * Indian people, people of Indian nationality, or people who have an Indian ancestor ** Non-resident Indian, a citizen of India who has temporarily emigrated to another country * South Asia ...

." For example, one account pieced from various sources says that in the early nineteenth century, Jim Crow (no connection with the later segregation laws called by that name), an "Indian prince" and son of Chief

Sam Story Sam Story, also named Timpoochee Kinnard, was Chief of the Walton County, Florida, band of Euchee (Yuchi) Indians in the early 19th century, who occupied the lands on and to the west of the Choctawhatchee River. His parents were Timothy Kinnard, a ...

of the local Euchee Indians, married Harriet, a beautiful, "more than two-thirds white" enslaved house servant owned by a local white family. The interracial couple had a daughter, Eliza. When the Euchee migrated to southern Florida in 1832, shortly after Sam Story's death, Harriet (who may have been her owner's daughter) and the baby stayed behind with the white family. When Eliza grew up, she married a "

yellow boy Acid mine drainage, acid and metalliferous drainage (AMD), or acid rock drainage (ARD) is the outflow of acidic water from metal mines or coal mines. Acid rock drainage occurs naturally within some environments as part of the rock weathering ...

" (mixed-race with high proportion of white, such as quadroon or octoroon) named Jim Harris, son of a slave belonging to another white family. Their daughter, Lovey, eventually married another "yellow boy" and had a large family of good-looking children, who "married into another half-breed family." It is also said that other Euchee besides Jim Crow left many descendants (presumably mixed-race) in the area. Many families in the Holmes County area claim Native American descent, especially from the Creek Indians, a larger nation of the Southeast with whom the

Euchee The Yuchi people, also spelled Euchee and Uchee, are a Native American tribe based in Oklahoma. In the 16th century, Yuchi people lived in the eastern Tennessee River valley in Tennessee. In the late 17th century, they moved south to Alabama, ...

were once affiliated. The local Choctawhatchee Creek have organized and said to be seeking state recognition.

Census records

Federal censuses of Holmes and the adjacent counties of Walton and

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...

dating to 1850 list many Dominicker families and individuals. They are variously identified as

, and

black Black is a color which results from the absence or complete absorption of visible light. It is an achromatic color, without hue, like white and grey. It is often used symbolically or figuratively to represent darkness. Black and white ha ...

(sometimes even among members of the same family, with parents given different classifications). Classifications for a given individual often changed from one census to the next, as they were dependent on the opinion of the census enumerator. The census records show that in the decades following the

, many Dominickers married white spouses, and their children had increasingly even more white ancestry. In 1930 the Southern block in Congress had the census changed to reflect their binary system and one-drop rule: every individual was classified only as either black or white, hiding the large number of mixed-race individuals in the South. The 1950 federal census instructed enumerators to make note of local populations of mixed white, black, and Indian ancestry in the eastern United States. In Holmes County,

Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, a ...

, and nowhere else, 60 Dominickers were so counted, although they were designated as white on the census. In 1956, a

United States Public Health Service The United States Public Health Service (USPHS or PHS) is a collection of agencies of the Department of Health and Human Services concerned with public health, containing nine out of the department's twelve operating divisions. The Assistant ...

worker, who had tabulated the 1950 census findings, made a brief visit to the area. He interviewed some white residents but was unable to make contact with any Dominickers, said to number about 40 at that time. His field notes indicate that at least one Dominicker was known to claim being of Spanish and Indian descent. He also noted that "the term Dominicker is not acceptable to the group and is not used in their presence."

Dispersal and assimilation

At some point in the 1960s, following the US Supreme Court decision in '' Brown v Board of Education'' ruling that segregated schools were unconstitutional, the school system closed the black school in Ponce de Leon. Students of color were integrated into the other local public schools. Some descendants of the Dominicker group still live in the area, but since World War II, many have scattered to other parts of the country. Those remaining in Holmes County and nearby localities have quietly assimilated into the white community. There is no organized affiliation of Dominicker descendants.

Similar groups in the region

The Dominickers are sometimes given a brief mention in sources discussing

Melungeon Melungeons ( ) are an ethnicity from the Southeastern United States who descend from Europeans, Native American, and sub-Saharan Africans brought to America as indentured servants and later as slaves. Historically, the Melungeons were associate ...

people, or other tri-racial isolate groups. There is, however, no known link between the Dominickers and any other mixed-race group. According to an account on Rootsweb, about 1857 more than 100 mixed-race families were said to migrate by wagon train from Holmes County to Rapides and Vernon parishes in Louisiana, where they became part of the mixed-race people known as

Redbones Redbone is a term historically used in much of the southern United States to denote a multiracial individual or culture. In Louisiana, it also refers to a specific, geographically and ethnically distinct group. Definition The term has had vario ...

. found on the Holmes County USGenWeb site at The

have been known as a group in southwestern Louisiana, and their origins are still debated. There have been marriages between members of that group and relatives of the Holmes County Dominickers, but there is no evidence to suggest a common origin for the two groups.

Notes

References

*Daniel J. Sharfstein, “The Secret History of Race in the United States,” ''Yale Law Journal'', Volume 112, Number 6, March 2003

**Direct link to the full text of the essay (PDF format):

*{{Cite book , last= Sweet , first= Frank W. , title= Legal History of the Color Line , publisher= Backintyme , year= 2005 , isbn=0-939479-23-0 **“Antebellum Louisiana and Alabama: Two Color Lines, Three Endogamous Groups,” October 15, 200

**“The Antebellum South Rejects the One-Drop Rule,” November 15, 200

**“The One-Drop Rule Arrives in the Postbellum Lower South,” October 1, 200

External links

''Piney Woods History''
a website that presents transcripts of original documents mentioning the Dominickers, as well as a number of local family trees, photographs, and other pertinent materials
''The Indians of North Florida''
a website run by Dominickers of the Creek-Cheraw Indian Tribal Organization. This presents information and documents on community history, language and cultural preservation, an independent press and community newsletter, spiritual traditions, and activism related to communal economic development and educational programs that "lay the ground work for tribal self-sufficiency through individual responsibility and accomplishment."