Alabama Cajans

Alabama Cajans

"Our People"[1]
Cajan Weaver School, Washington County, Alabama
Total population
1930 (est.)	1800-2000[2]
1950 (est.)	1928[3]
1974 (est.)	2000-4500[1][4]
Regions with significant populations
Mobile, Washington, and Baldwin Counties, Alabama, eastern United States
Languages
English
Religion
Baptist, Methodist, Holiness movement[1], Hoodoo[5]
Related ethnic groups
Dominickers, Redbones, Melungeons, Lumbee, Wesorts, Carmelites, Chestnut Ridge people, Free Black people

The Alabama Cajans were an ethnic group of mixed-race descent, thought to originate from free black people, whites, and Native Americans in colonial Alabama.^[5] They resided mostly in the counties of Mobile, Washington, and Baldwin. 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 perjorative.^[6] They instead preferred the name "Our People".^[1]

The Cajans were given their label by a local politician, but were unrelated to the Louisiana Cajuns, due to not being of Acadian origin. The MOWA Band of Choctaw Indians consists of a portion of their descendants.^[6]

The "Alabama Cajans" were given their label by a local politician who assumed they were related to the Louisiana Cajuns, but they were unrelated and not of Acadian origin.^[7][5][1] Many saw the name "Cajan" as pejorative.^[6][1] Scholars generally consider the Cajans to have been an Alabama ethnic group originating from free Black people, whites, and Native Americans, but census officials generally recorded them as free Black people or mulattoes initially, and later as whites. Towards the latter half of the 20th century, they were also designated as Indian or Cajun based on local language use.^[4][1]

The Reed family ancestral to the Cajans initially settled near Tibbie. The women were initially recorded as mulattoes; Daniel Reed, who was locally described as a mixed-race man from the West Indies, and his sons were classified as free Negroes. His wife, Rose Reed, was recorded as a former slave, emancipated in 1818, and born in Mississippi.^[1] Later on, Daniel Reed emancipated two of his children.^[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.^[8] By 1974, one of the families descended from the Reeds were seen to have mostly gained acceptance among the white families of the area, and were marked white on an earlier census.^[4]

The sons of the Reed family married the daughters of Jim and Dave Weaver, recorded as mulatto.^[1] They were documented to have migrated to Alabama from the Putnam and Greene counties in Georgia, where they lived from 1810-1820.^[6] They migrated with the Byrd family, also ancestral to the Cajans.^[9] Lemuel Byrd was reported to have initially migrated from North Carolina to fight in the Indian Wars under Andrew Jackson. Byrd appeared on the 1840 Mobile County census report as a free person of color, and married Anne Weaver.^[1]

By the first half of the 20th century, these families had intermarried and rapidly expanded in number over the generations, according to census records, which until then typically labelled them as Black, mulatto, or free colored.^[8] 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 the latter group included 288 people listed as white and 449 listed as Black. In Mobile County, enumerators did not use the term Cajun or Cajan at that time, but using similar methods to the Washington County investigator, estimated that 86 people were listed as Indian, 737 as white, and 137 as Black.^[4]

Tibbie

Citronelle

Mt. Vernon

McIntosh

Areas of historic Alabama Cajan settlement, 1950^[10]

Alabama 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.^[10][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.^[11] They were seen to often live in inaccessible areas, forming small isolated communities.^[5][7] Genealogical analysis suggests many of them emigrated from their initial tracts and assimilated into other populations.^[12] By 1974, they were observed to have been emigrating to nearby cities, where they were not seen as Black, and marrying into the dominant population.^[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.^[6][13] Percy said Rose had been Native American, and Reuben Reed said Rose's husband Daniel Reed had been Spanish. The judge had also described Reed as having Spanish and Native American heritage. 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.^[6][13]

In 1925, defending himself against miscegenation charges, Daniel Reed argued he was white and "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 Black heritage, and he was instead indicted for marrying a white woman.^[14] Novkov gives Reed as an example of those Black Alabamans who attempted to escape segregation by claiming to have Native American ancestors rather than Black ones.^[15]

Afterwards, in Weaver v. State, the Alabama court developed methodology to determine if a defendant was Black via physical characteristics and social relations, including whether they attended Black churches, sent their children to Black schools, and "voluntarily" lived in equality with Black people.^[13] Weaver had also claimed Native American heritage, but the court decided Weaver was guilty due to his relatives having appearances indicating Black ancestry. He and his wife were thus imprisoned.^[13]

Political scientist Julie Novkov states 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.^[13] She said it is possible Weaver was related to Reed, since the Reed trial noted the existence of a mixed-race group with the surnames of Reed and Weaver in the locality, but that neither trial confirmed this and each relied on separate witnesses and law firms.^[13]

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.^[13] 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 industry.^[16] They were also prevalent in the turpentine industry.^[5] Like the nearby Redbones and Dominickers, they were noted for distilling alcohol.^[17] 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.^[5][18]

They received the name "Cajan" from the Alabama State senator, L.W. McRae.^[19] 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][20] 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.^{[5][18][21][22]} Believing in signs and "ha'nts", they wore "tricks" to repel diseases and bad luck.^[7][5]

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][18] They were observed to sing spirituals.^[23]

Cajans had their own school system by the 1930s, as "special" white schools, due to standard white schools excluding a portion of them.^[24] 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.^[25] Cajans refused to allow Black teachers in 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.^[18][1] Cajan schools were noted to be underfunded, but improved over time, hiring more locals as teachers.^[4]

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]

• 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.