Arteries of capital: William Johnson and the practice of black moneylending in the antebellum U.S. South

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis essay examines the world of black moneylenders in the pre-Civil War U.S. South and demonstrates that black Americans were essential arteries for capital, bound to their communities through complex relationships of debt and obligation. In particular, it reconstructs the lending practices of William T. Johnson, a former slave and free black barber in Natchez, Mississippi who, between 1835 and 1851, extended more than 250 loans totaling at least $16,000. Johnson served as a creditor for a broad segment of the Natchez population, lending money to wealthy white planters as well as his nephew and his mother. Johnson used chains of credit to draw creditor and borrower into ongoing relationships that were simultaneously and indissociably economic and social. These relationships of debt and obligation speak to important issues related to the relationship between race and capital in the antebellum U.S. South.