Free persons of color shall be competent witnesses in all the courts of this State, in civil cases whereto a free person of color is a party, and in all criminal cases wherein a free person of color is defendant, or wherein the offence charged is a crime or misdemeanor against the person or property of a free person of color.

If any officer shall knowingly issue any marriage license to parties either or whom is of African descent and the other a white person, such office shall be guilty of a misdemeanor. If any office, or minister of the Gospel, shall marry such persons together, he shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.

All minors may, by whichever parent has the control of them, be bound out as apprentices to any respectable person until they attain the age of twenty-one, or for a shorter period. To the master shall belong the proceeds of the apprentice’s labor; but at the expiration of his term of service, a faithful apprentice shall be entitled to a small allowance from the master with which to begin life; the amount to be left in the first instance to the master’s generosity.

Source: “Laws in Relation to Freedmen,” 39 Cong., 2 Sess., Senate Exec. Doc. 6, Freedman’s Affairs, 179-81.