This from the latest edition of Native South, courtesy of IndigenousPeoplesIssues.com:

Malinda Maynor Lowery, ‘Indians, Southerns, and Americans: Race, Tribe and Nation during “Jim Crow”‘:

After the Civil War, Southerners of all races struggled to resolve questions of citizenship, opportunity, political autonomy, and freedom in a drastically changed economic environment. The story of Southern African Americans in this period is well known, while that of Native Americans centers on conflicts over the United States’ imperial expansion in the West. But Native Americans in the South contended with an imperial force as well: the mounting wave of white supremacy. By 1910 white supremacy dictated the separation of racial groups in public facilities—schools, churches, movie theaters, streetcars, and other places.

In Robeson County, North Carolina, home of the largest Indian community east of the Mississippi, that separation was threefold in the county seat of Lumberton. There were different facilities for whites, blacks, and Indians. In the county courthouse each group had its own water fountains and restrooms, while the Lumberton movie theater boasted a balcony divided by chicken wire for the Indian and black patrons. What were the contours and boundaries of racial segregation for Native American Southerners? How did their identities function and how did the concept of race become institutionalized out of identities based on different markers, of kinship and place? Furthermore, how did Indians negotiate identities as both Indians and American citizens? Why do Indians seek recognition, when other American citizens have devoted so much energy to dispossessing them?

I want to introduce the topic of Indian citizenship and federal recognition with a personal story. I am Lumbee, from Robeson County, North Carolina, and the people you see in this photograph are all Lumbees.