Good Morning!

Greetings to all mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, grandmothers, grandfathers, children, distant relatives and friends of multiracial families.

Let us acknowledge our appreciation to Charles Byrd for having the foresight to conceive the idea of this first Multiracial March on Washington and the determination to carry out his vision. Thank you, Charles Byrd!

Welcome to a chapter of history! Remember, never again can this history be repeated. Never again can we seize the moment to say, "I was at the first Multiracial March on Washington!" Our children's children will read about this day and acknowledge that you are the leaders of this movement and YOU were the great visionaries of the future. And as we compete with the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta and the Olympic Soccer games here in Washington, D.C., let us acknowledge Dan O'Brien. Dan is representing America in the Olympic decathlon event. He has been quoted as saying, "When given the choice for self-identification on the current forms, I check the African-American box." He also told of his preference to have a mixed race box to correctly self-identify. Just think. Dan O'Brien, a multiracial person, may soon be declared the GREATEST ATHLETE IN THE WORLD! Dan, we are here representing you today, as you so proudly represent America in Atlanta. We wish you well. Together, in different ways, we are both creating history.

To the people who have traveled great distances, thank you for cherishing the issue enough to care. For the people who have traveled any distance, thank you for being bold and proud about an issue that has divided this country for TOO LONG!

My name is BJ Winchester. I am co-founder of a Multiracial Social Group in Jacksonville, Florida called Unity. We felt Unity was the best name for our group since, by definition -- according to Webster, Unity is "...the state of being one, as in spirit, aims, interests, feelings, etc., of that which is made up of diverse elements or individuals." We felt that it was relevant for Jacksonville, Florida to be represented here today, because Jacksonville is the birth place of the Jim Crow Laws. These laws permeate the climate of America which we see today. It is these laws which have been the backbone of the one-drop of black-blood-theory. And although these unjust laws are legally non-binding, they are still very much a part of the American psyche. The anti-miscegenation laws, laws against interracial marriage originated from the Jim Crow laws. These same laws have created this unspoken view of multiracial children as being illegitimate. We are glad to say in 1996 that the community of Jacksonville, Florida has embraced its multiracial community, and although it is not perfect, it is striving to educate itself and support multiracial people.

So it is today that we traveled from Florida to unify the multiracial movement. We come together in UNITY to share our "oneness in spirit" for the freedom of choice. The freedom of choice for our children and multiracial people to self-identify to that which they are -- multiracial. Today the multiracial community is forever under the scrutiny of many eyes. There are many eyes that look, not at out true self, but at the color or hue of our skin and decide for us what we should be called and/or labeled. I ask you, has it not been clear enough when we have refused to answer their question of identity (due to the lack of a choice that speaks the truth) that they would then insult us further by filling in the blank for us? Have you asked yourself what gives the people who choose to administer the "Eyeball Test" the right to say who I am, or who you are, or who anybody is for that matter? Last time I checked there were no federally regulated classes given and certified licenses awarded for this "Critical Eyeball Federally Mandated Test."

Yet this compiled data is used by all Federal Agencies. There is no social relevance of racial make-up of the United States if we're all created and treated equal. So it goes without saying, the country is still in need of categorizing its people. For now all of us are NOT equal. We are a minority with predictions of an astounding growth rate faster than any other group of people. But as the nation opposes our views due to their lack of education, we stand for the struggle to gain acceptance for being honest about racial tolerance, racial acceptance and racial integration. We can find solace in the notion that we will soon be the majority!

Today I have come before you to stand for diversity, love and understanding of one another. I bring before you history calling us to move forward. Today, through me, the voices from our past call us to be strong. No matter how painful history has been to us in the past, we have an opportunity to come together now and rewrite the course of race relations in this country. Today I provide you with a road map of where we have been, and hopefully a route to the future.

I speak of the mulatto in the passages of history because it gives a clear view of how history can repeat itself. I do not mean to exclude multiracial people who are of non-black heritage.

The earliest recorded history of multiracial people was in 1691. Anne Wall, an English white woman, was arrested and enslaved for the sole reason of having two children born of a black man. I think this is what she might have been saying at that time...

I have seen the confusion these legislatures and plantation owners have. They are posed with the dilemma of mulatto children born to white women. My two sons are mulatto and created by the union of their Negro dad and myself, their white mother. The legislatures are trying to figure out how to stop these Negro men from having children that by law are FREE. For us, it is an issue of love and of being together as a family. We couldn't marry because nobody would marry us. It is against the law and nobody wants to go to jail. They denounced our children as "that abominable mixture and spurious issue." Mulatto children of white women were becoming more frequent. They first felt the English law was acceptable to use in America. The English law states that a child's status would follow the status of its father. Upon further review, the law was to be changed to follow the status of the mother. The children of slave women would then still be the plantation owner's property, or chattel. But this newly posed problem of mulatto children born of white women has them wondering what to do. Well they finally figured it all out at my expense. In 1705 they stiffened the sentence for white persons who married Negroes or mulattoes to six months in jail. They wrote about me in the Elizabeth City County Newspaper in Virginia as if I had committed a terrible crime. They said, "and for as much as Anne Wall of this country, a free English woman being convicted of having two mulatto sons by a Negro, begotten and borne of her body contrary to ye law, it is therefore ordered that ye said Anne Wall do serve Mr. Peter Hobson of Norfolk County, Virginia the term five years." Yes, they fined me 15 pounds of sterling, five years of service and my sons were also taken from me and turned over for service to Mr. Hobson until they reached thirty-one years of age. They even banished me from Elizabeth County. I don't care too much about what they did to me, but they were unfair to my children and other mulatto children. They banned free mulattoes from this county in Virginia, so many of them moved north to Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York. They passed legislation in 1705 prohibiting mulattoes from holding office, canceled their right to vote, their right to bear arms, and the government taxed them unfairly so they couldn't make a profit.

From the 17th century this phenomenon continued right into the 18th century. In 1755 in Maryland, the ONLY broad count of mulattoes was made in America. This was 100 years before the first continuous count taken in 1850. 3600 mulattoes lived amongst 108,000 whites and 45,000 blacks. They made up 2.4% of the population.

The 18th century bore many mulatto children on plantations throughout the south. Although there are no records for this time, Jacksonville, Florida had four plantation owners who had children born of their free black wives. They were the Kingsleys, the Frasers, the Erwins and the Clarkes. Mr. Kingsley strongly advocated the intermarriage between races as a way to improve the human race. To Kingsley, "The intermediate grades of color are not only healthy, but when condition is favorable, they are improved in shape, strength and beauty." Mr. Kingsley said this in the 18th century, a time where there are not many records of these children. This proves to be the same through the first half of the 19th century.

However, in 1835, Judge William Harper of South Carolina was asked to declare the fate of two mulatto men. This is what I believe he would say to us today:

I, Judge Harper, am a proud judge from the state of South Carolina. They brought before me two fair-skinned brothers who exhibited none of the distinctive mark of the African race. One of them was a military officer. Both had married into respectable families, been received into society and been recognized as white men. They were brought to the court as witnesses. Their genealogy was announced because in 1835 a person of color could not testify as a credible witness in court. The evidence showed each of the brothers was 1/16 black. The black heritage of these witnesses was certainly invisible. The grandfather who was of mixed heritage, although dark complexioned, had been recognized as a white man also. It was up to the jury and myself to rule on their "blackness."

I refused to make a ruling on the whiteness or blackness of a free person of color involved in a case simply according to the proportion of white blood in his veins. I wrote for the court... "We cannot say what admixture of Negro blood will make a colored person...The condition of the individual is not to be determined solely by distinct and visible mixture of Negro blood, but by reputation, by his reception into society, and his having commonly exercised the privileges of a white man...It may be well and proper, that a man of worth, honesty, industry and respectability should have the rank of a white man, while a vagabond of the same degree of blood should be confined to the inferior caste. It is hardly necessary to say that a slave cannot be a white man...it belongs for these men to settle questions of common usage and the meaning of popular terms."

My friends, Judge William Harper made more sense 161 years ago than the OMB makes today!!! Does it make sense that a judge in S.C. in the year 1835 decided that it was the choice of these men to decide for themselves the matter of who they were, and yet in the United States in the year 1996 our Judges, Senators, Representatives and President don't have this wisdom? We ask these leaders of our Great Country to have the fortitude to pass laws to allow multiracial people their right to the pursuit of happiness which is our Constitutional Right! And our pursuit of happiness includes the proper and accurate choice of self-identification!

Apparently a judge in 1983, in the case of a Louisiana woman named Susie Phipps felt he had more wisdom than Judge Harper in 1835. Although Phipps looked white, was raised white, and identified herself as white, a mid-wife had designated her "colored" on her birth certificate. In 1770, Phipps' White great-great-great-great-grandfather had a slave mistress, and the midwife in the small community where Phipps was born apparently knew that some of her ancestors and relatives, including her parents, were considered "colored." When, as an adult, Phipps declared herself white on her application for a passport, the discrepancy was discovered and the passport denied. Phipps sued. The case was denied on appeal, and she remained legally "black." I ask the Judges of the Supreme Court of 1996, isn't this an issue of self-identity just as Judge Harper suggested in 1835?

As we move into the second half of the 19th century, they begin to count mulattoes. In 1850 the census takers counted mulattoes for the first time. 146 years ago, they acknowledged the need to recognize a person of mixed ancestry. With the Jim Crow laws gone and slavery dead, why can't we acknowledge this need in 1996? The 1850 census relied on the eye of the census taker to recognize a person of mixed ancestry. Although not perfect, for once there was an accurate count. In 1850, there were 406,000 mixed-race people making up 11.2% of the Negro population and 1.8% of the national total. 66% of those mulattoes lived in Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, Delaware and Washington, D.C. This is known as the Mulatto Belt. The mulattoes in Louisiana, mainly living in New Orleans, supported the balance of this population. The census continued to count until the year 1910 with a tally of 2,051,000 mulattoes, 20% of the Negro population and only mulattoes that were "visibly" mulatto to the eye of the census taker. Again we see the importance of the critical "Eyeball Test."

But at the turn of the century, something happened that would stop this nation from counting its mixed-race people. As we entered the 20th century, the City Council of Jacksonville, Florida, on November 6, 1901, voted unanimously for separate but equal facilities. The separate but equal doctrine legalized segregation laws for well over a half a century, but facilities did not become equal. Statutes were passed in record numbers making racial intermarriage illegal. Pressure was put on the state legislatures to define "Negro" and the census dropped the mulatto category. The one-drop-of-black-blood theory was adopted and has never left the minds of both black and white people alike.

Finally, today as we enter the 21st century, I would like to bring you the voice of BJ Winchester, the mother of two multiracial children. There are four significant reasons for the OMB to count multiracial people. 1) To date, the last known count was in the year 1910. We have no way of measuring the growth of this population without these counts. 2) Without the ability to check all the boxes that apply, multiracial people will continue to feel as if they don't exist because we cannot truly self-identify. If a multiracial person wants to self-identify as multiracial and the inclusive box or boxes are not there to check, he/she has the feeling of being considered "nonexistent." 3) The medical community needs these numbers to track the inherited immunities of genetic diseases and the diseases themselves in multiracial people and, 4) These numbers are an indicator of the state of race relations as it relates to the American Family.

If America is truly interested in the "State of Race Relations," then look to this issue of "self-identity of a multiracial person" first and foremost.

If Americans, any Americans, want to be equal to one another, it is to say that all of our blood is equal. And if all of our blood is equal, and our children have the right to our blood, then our children have equal rights to the blood of both sides of their family. This is called "Jus Sanguinis," Latin for "right of blood." This right is given to our children and is shown most appropriately in an example of an Olympic candidate. Let's say a person's parents immigrated to America from Spain and have become American citizens. Their child is born in the United States and has dual citizenship in both countries. Their child may participate in the Olympics representing America because he/she was born in the United States or for Spain because of their "right of blood." So why is it that we can understand dual-citizenship but not dual-heritage? Dual-heritage is based upon "Jus Sanguinis," right of blood. Are sports more respected than human life itself? I think not. Sports are a reflection of society. Coming together for the healthy competition highlighting the diverse strengths of each competitor, yet keeping the one thing we all have in common, we ALL belong to the human race.

America's multiracial athletes are in Atlanta where Booker T. Washington gave his most famous speech, The Atlanta Compromise. Although multiracial, he didn't identify as such at the time because he could not. He was not given the choice. But I feel as though his words spoken then are appropriate to repeat today:

He said, "In all things that are purely social, we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all the things essential to mutual progress."

This issue is a purely social issue. As individuals of many diversities, we must respect our differences in choice and fight to maintain our freedom for these choices of individual self-identity. Let's show the dexterity of each finger as it specializes in its own function. Let's celebrate as our fingers type the letter to our legislature. Let's rejoice as the pointer finger dials the telephone number to join a multiracial group, or dials the number to an adoption agency to adopt a biracial child. Let our fingers be the support for our young children to hold while they learn to walk on their own. And lastly, let our hands come together to clap for the words of encouragement of their first steps of mutual progress. Let's clap for our first essential steps as a multiracial community, towards mutual progress. Let's clap for the acceptance of falling down the first few times we decide to try, so that we may be encouraged to do it again. Bring your hands together in unison! Please join hands with your brother or sister at your side. Raise them in the air, as a sign of unity. We will not back down from this issue. We will continue to be vocal for what's right. Racial harmony is right. And to the people who continually ask, "What about the children?" we answer: If you would stop forcing them to choose between their parents, our children will be alright! Thank you very much!

Contact BJ Winchester
P.O. Box 2902
Orange Park,
Florida 32067-2902
904-276-6668

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