Black laws in Virginia 1793: “During the same year, the General Assembly passed legislation to register all free Negroes and mulattos in the Commonwealth with the clerk of the Court in the community in which they lived. [They were] free to sell their services, [and] were to be registered and numbered in a book by the town Clerk. This register recorded name, age, color, status of emancipation details—by whom and in which county court the registered Negro had been freed.
The law required free Negroes and mulattos to re-register every three years. Unregistered free Negroes could be jailed as runaway slaves.
These certificates and registers served as the free Negroes’ legal identity; these “free papers”: as they came to be called, kept free people of color from jail or from being identified mistakenly as slaves. Recent research indicates that while some free Negroes came in to make the initial registration, many did not re-register unless their original papers had been lost.”
More to think about when learning about Registered Provisional Immigrant (RPI) status. We have never ask for this — Hopefully orgs and local activists will pick up on the so called “immigration reform” thing sooner rather than later….as it has happened with the demand to end all deportations/Moratorium On All Deportations.

“The Ohio laws, first passed in 1804, required all blacks and mulattoes residing in the state to [R]egister themselves and their children with the county clerk’s office and to provide proof of their free status. Registered slaves were required to pay the office for a certificate confirming freedom. Employers were forbidden by law to hire any non-certificate-holding black or mulatto.” [[Sound Familiar?]] The not so new, Improved and Modernized Register Provisional Immigrant (RPI) status falls too damn low to any other Register status in US history. How can RPI be a step fwd??? Again looking back at US history – Registered status is nothing new…it has not even evolved in anything good or modernized, but instead it has fallen farther back purposely disenfranchising people.