Indentured Servitude

Westerville's origins are embroiled in Ohio's history of invading Indigenous lands, displacing Native peoples, and erasing evidence of their physical presence from the landscape. Learn more.

Ohio’s history of systemically oppressing African Americans dates back to the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which carved out the nation’s first organized territory and included the future state of Ohio. It prohibited slavery but allowed enslavers to reclaim freedom seekers who had escaped to Ohio (later reinforced by federal law). The state’s first constitution only allowed white males to vote, and starting in 1804, Ohio began passing a series of Black laws that further oppressed African Americans. It was against this inequitable backdrop that Westerville’s earliest Black settlers toiled and raised their families.

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• Migration laws made it difficult for Black settlers to move to Westerville.
• One Westerville family defied Ohio's miscegenation laws.
• These laws prevented Black children's education in Westerville.

Slavery was never legal in Ohio, but its legacies are entwined with the lives of those who lived here. Black people could still be held in bondage via indentured servitude, and freedom seekers, if caught, could be sent back into slavery. Local white families could be found all over the pro- and anti-slavery spectrum. For many survivors, slavery was not an episode in their lives that they could leave in the past after they moved to Ohio. Their actions in Westerville were a direct result of their experiences living under slavery’s shadow.

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• Indentured servitude functioned as an alternative to slavery in Westerville.
• Some people who lived in the Westerville area were pro-slavery.
• People who lived in Westerville took part in the struggle for emancipation.
• The powerful legacies of slavery actively shaped the choices of formerly enslaved people who moved to Westerville, even after slavery ended.

Racial discrimination was not confined to the South in the first half of the twentieth century. The Ku Klux Klan flourished in Westerville. Its presence cast an ominous shadow over the town’s Black residents and other minorities, who had to work harder to find employment, experienced segregation, and were racially stereotyped.

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• Westerville was a KKK stronghold in the 1920s.
• Black residents faced more hurdles to employment than white residents.
• Westerville had sites of segregation.
• Westerville had minstrel shows.
• Other minority groups experienced racial discrimination in Westerville.

After the Civil War, an era known as Reconstruction, Black Americans used their newfound freedoms to reimagine what it meant to be an American citizen. Despite facing decades of Jim Crow laws and violent opposition to civil rights, they challenged white Americans’ ideas about who could participate in democracy. Into the Civil Rights era and beyond, a subset of Westerville residents continued to look for opportunities to move the needle in the national discourse about justice and equality for all.

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• Injustice & inequities spurred Black Westerville residents to politically organize after the Civil War.
• A Human Relations Council fought housing and workplace discrimination in Westerville.
• People from Westerville fought injustice across the country.

With all this evidence that racism has been a major problem in Westerville over the past 200 years, why have these stories not been told before now? Learn more.

Return to: Racism in Westerville History.