Badge or Tax Badge (Slave badge)

Description

The city of Charleston, South Carolina (and many other American cities), mandated that enslaved people wear tax badges like this one when hired out by their owners or permitted self-employment activities. This copper tag was worn by a fisherman, emblematic of the far-reaching control of his owner even as the man worked on the Atlantic Ocean coastline or inland waterways. The badge indicated the city tax that relegated human beings to the status of an object and number had been paid. This badge tax also was a means of controlling the quantity of such workers during an era that viewed unregulated “hiring out” to be detrimental to the opportunities for free laborers.