I was looking for a related thread to bump..
So my cousin sent me an email the other day. She was reading Jodi Byrd’s The Transit of Empire about Freedmen in Mississippi. And decided on a whim to look up the the final accounting of Native American slavery:
Final Rolls Index
She ended up finding two of my ancestors on this list. They weren’t lost to history or anything like that just the details of their enslavement and who was responsible.
So apparently we now have a verified claim that my great great great grandfather was enslaved and later freed by the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians.
Fast forward to 2021 and the tribe is considering granting citizenship to freedmen. Probably because of lobbying or lawsuits by ADOS in the area. Obviously this will be contentious because of the sheer number of Black descendants that could potentially be willing to join compared to how small the tribe is.
My question here if is anyone is still reading this (lol) is what impact would joining a tribe have on a potential future reparations claim? And do any of you think there’s any value in this association?