Fifty-eight residents ask the legislature to pass a law "more effectually" to restrain the traffic carried on by free persons of color selling grain. They believed that free black people sold "an amount of grain and other articles of produce, greatly beyond what is raised by their own industry." The articles were "improperly & dishonestly procured by a secret pilfering trade carried on between them and slaves of each neighborhood," the petitioners contend. Free persons of color should be prohibited from selling any kind of produce without a certificate signed by two or more respectable white persons.
Result: Referred to committee for courts of justice.
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Repository: Library of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia
