Free negro

In United States history, a free negro or free black was the legal status in the territory of the United States of an African American person who was not a slave. The term was in use before the independence of the Thirteen Colonies and elsewhere in British North America until the abolition of slavery in the United States in 1865, which rendered this distinction irrelevant.

American History USA Articles

"Forty Acres and a Mule" -- The Elusive Promise
After the Civil War, the freed slaves hoped for land redistribution and economic security. Instead they saw the creation of the sharecropping system.
From Slavery to Serfdom -- Life for Black People in the "New South"
Life for the black people of the south got progressively more harsh after 1877. A sharecropping system entrenched itself that bordered on serfdom.