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Dominickers

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Dominickers
Teacher and Dominicker students at Mt. Zion School, c. 1905-1910.
Total population
1950 (census)60[1][2]
Regions with significant populations
 United States  Florida
Near Ponce de Leon in Holmes County, within the Florida Panhandle.
Languages
Southern American English
Religion
Christianity (Protestantism)
Related ethnic groups
African-Americans, Alabama Cajans, Beaver Creek Indians, Brandywine people, Brass Ankles, Carmelites, Chestnut Ridge people, Free Black people, Lumbee, Melungeons, Redbones

The Dominickers were a small biracial ethnic group located within the Florida Panhandle, centered near the town of Ponce de Leon in Holmes County, Florida. Members of the group descended from a single interracial marriage during the Antebellum period, and were of generationally mixed African American and European American ancestry.[3][4][5] The group became well known locally, to the extent that Dominicker and Dominickers became regional terms for people of mixed race.[4][5] During the 20th century, academics classified them among 200 presumed "racial isolates" along groups such as the Redbones and Melungeons.[6]

Etymology

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The term "Dominickers" first originated as a pejorative. According to local accounts, the name derives from a divorce case in which a local man described his estranged wife as "black and white, like an old Dominicker chicken."[3][7][8] Over time, both "Dominicker" and "Dominickers" evolved into generalized racial terms within the region in reference to all people of mixed African and European ancestry.[4]

The Redbones of Southwest Louisiana, who the Dominickers were mapped as residing nearby to, were sometimes called Dominics.[9]

History

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The Dominickers were mixed-race descendants of the widow of a pre-Civil War plantation owner and one of her Black slaves, named Thomas.[a] She married him during the first years of the Civil War, and they later had five children together. Said children married both Black and white spouses, and their descendants rose in number over time. They populated the backwoods and swamps, typically in poverty, having large families and small farms. They became populous enough to establish their own identity by the 1920s.[10][4][11][12]

The first known mention in print of the Dominickers was in a 1939 American Guide series on Florida.[10] Author Cathy Salustri states the descriptions of Dominickers in the guide may be insensitive to some readers, noting it described them as "treacherous" and "vindictive".[13] Researcher Calvin L. Beale noted sixty existed in 1950 Holmes County, who were only marked as white on the census.[14][1][15] Similarly, there was no category for a mixed-race person recognized by the Florida Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services, thus social workers had to designate Dominicker children as either Black or white.[12][b] They chose based on the race of their mother, and the racial makeup of the neighborhood of their parents.[12]

Dominickers and other nearby population isolates, 1950.[9]

Dominickers were not accepted as social equals by the white community, but they kept themselves apart from the main Black community as well. They formed a small middle layer of Holmes County society separate from both whites and Black people.[12][4]

Before integration, their children were required to attend a one-room, twenty student segregated school (as required by Florida's Jim Crow laws). They were not provided with busing, and thus had to walk several miles to school. A Dominicker graveyard adjoined the school.[4][12] Academic Ralph D. Howell suggested they looked Spanish or Cuban, noting some claimed Spanish origin, but stated some appeared to be Black.[4] This variation of appearance was noted to be possible even within one family.[11]

After desegregation, locals had varied opinions on if most Dominickers had assimilated into the main populations.[5] Dental researcher Hamilton B.G. Robinson states the Dominickers, Redbones, and Brass Ankles should be of interest to researchers of human genetics, similarly to the Brandywine people.[16][c]

See also

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Notes

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  1. ↑ Thomas was also the name of the plantation owner. Thomas the slave was named after him, in accordance with a common practice wherein a slave took the name of their master.[10]
  2. ↑ Interracial marriage was illegal in Florida at the time.[12]
  3. ↑ The Brandywine possess high phenotypic frequencies of Dentinogenesis imperfecta and Tyrosinase positive albinism, which Robinson attributes to the founder effect.[16]

References

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  1. 1 2 Beale, Calvin L. (December 1957). "American Triracial Isolates: Their Status and Pertinence to Genetic Research". Eugenics Quarterly. 4 (4): 187–196. doi:10.1080/19485565.1957.9987328.
  2. ↑ Pollitzer, William S. (June 1972). "The Physical Anthropology and Genetics of Marginal People of the Southeastern United States". American Anthropologist. 74 (3): 719–734. doi:10.1525/aa.1972.74.3.02a00360. Retrieved 3 July 2026.
  3. 1 2 Green, Jonathon (2026). "Dominicker". Green's Dictionary of Slang. Green's Dictionary of Slang. Jonathon Green and Abecedary Limited. Retrieved 12 March 2026.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 D. Howell, Ralph (1972). "Dominicker: A Regional Racial Term". American Speech. 47 (3). Duke University Press: 305–306. doi:10.2307/3087971. JSTOR 3087971. Retrieved 12 March 2026. ...most white people of the area claim that these people are of mixed white and black blood, and thus have adopted the term dominicker to refer to them.
  5. 1 2 3 Lindstrom, Andy (14 September 1986). "U.S. 90: Retracing North Florida's first highway reveals a road well-traveled in spots, abandoned to the Interstate in others". Tallahassee Democrat. Tallahassee, Florida. p. 76. Retrieved 13 March 2026. Out beyond Ponce de Leon, people of mixed black and white ancestry known as Dominickers still keep to a path separate from either race.
  6. ↑ Berry, Brewton (1963). Almost White. London, GB: Macmillan Publishers. pp. 27, 36. Retrieved 14 March 2026 – via Internet Archive.
  7. ↑ Allen, Irving Lewis (1983). "Marginal Persons and Groups". The Language of Ethnic Conflict: Social Organization and Lexical Culture. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. p. 104. ISBN 0-231-05556-0. Retrieved 3 July 2026 – via Internet Archive.
  8. ↑ Berry, Brewton (1972). "America's Mestizos". In Gist, Noel P.; Dworkin, Anthony Gary (eds.). The Blending of Races: Marginality and Identity in World Perspective. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Interscience. pp. 192–193. ISBN 0-471-30253-8. Retrieved 3 July 2026 – via Internet Archive.
  9. 1 2 Price, Edward Thomas (January 1950). Mixed Blood Populations of Eastern United States as to origins, localizations, and persistence. Oakland, CA: University of California. p. 112, 115, 116a, 118, 121, 299a. Retrieved 16 January 2026.
  10. 1 2 3 Federal Writers' Project (1939). Florida: A Guide to the Southernmost State. American Guide Series. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 445-446. Retrieved 14 March 2026 – via Internet Archive. In adjacent back country live 'Dominickers,' part Negro and part white, whose history goes back to the early 1860's.
  11. 1 2 Rose Bird, Stephanie (2009). Light, Bright, and Damned Near White. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers. p. 45, 48-49. ISBN 9780275989545. Retrieved 12 March 2026. The Federal Writer's Project (FWP) writers identify Dominickers as descendants of the widow of a pre–Civil War plantation owner and one of her slaves who may have been her husband's mulatto half-brother.
  12. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Derr, Mark (1989). "A Scarred and Barren Land". Some Kind of Paradise: A Chronicle of Man and the Land in Florida (1st ed.). New York, NY: William Morrow and Company Inc. p. 127. ISBN 9780688073596. Retrieved 3 July 2026 – via Google Books. The clan traced its origin to the first years of the Civil War when a plantation owner died and his wife married one of their slaves. Of their five children, three married whites and two married blacks. As the clan grew, its members began to intermarry, until, by the 1920s, it was large enough to have a well-established identity.
  13. ↑ Holladay, Bob (8 January 2017). "Pick up slice of history in vintage WPA guides". Tallahassee Democrat. Gannett Media Corp. p. D.6. Retrieved 3 July 2026 – via Proquest.
  14. ↑ Stout, Wesley (21 September 1966). "Lumbees Among Raceless Americans". The Orlando Sentinel. Orlando, Florida. p. 19. Retrieved 13 March 2026.
  15. ↑ O'Leary, Timothy J.; Levinson, David, eds. (1994). "American Isolates". North America. Encyclopedia of World Cultures. Vol. I. New York, NY: G.K. Hall & Co. ISBN 0-8161-1808-6. Retrieved 3 July 2026 – via Internet Archive.
  16. 1 2 Amsterdam, Morton; Finn, Sidney B.; Moyers, Robert E.; Robinson, Hamilton B. G.; Silverman, Sidney I., eds. (1968). "Oral Pathology". Year Book of Dentistry (1967-1968). Chicago, IL: Year Book Medical Publishers Incorporated. pp. 332–333. Retrieved 3 July 2026 – via Internet Archive.
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Further reading

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  • Carswell, E. W. He Sold No 'Shine Before Its Time. Taylor Publications, 1981.
  • Eidse, Faith. Voices of the Appalachicola. University Press of Florida, 2007.
  • McGregory, Jerrilyn. Wiregrass Country. University Press of Mississippi, 1997.
  • Schindler-Carter, Petra. Vintage Snapshots: The Fabrication of a Nation in the W.P.A. American Guide Series, 1999
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