Becoming Free, Becoming Black

Race, Freedom, and Law in Cuba, Virginia, and Louisiana

Alejandro de la Fuente, Ariela J. Gross

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9781108480642
• eBook ISBN:
  9781108612593
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Weltgeschichte

How did Africans become 'blacks' in the Americas? Becoming Free, Becoming Black tells the story of enslaved and free people of color who used the law to claim freedom and citizenship for themselves and their loved ones. Their communities challenged slaveholders' efforts to make blackness synonymous with slavery. Looking closely at three slave societies - Cuba, Virginia, and Louisiana - Alejandro de la Fuente and Ariela J. Gross demonstrate that the law of freedom - not slavery - established the meaning of blackness in law. Contests over freedom determined whether and how it was possible to move from slave to free status, and whether claims to citizenship would be tied to racial identity. Laws regulating the lives and institutions of free people of color created the boundaries between black and white, the rights reserved to white people, and the degradations imposed only on black people.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title page
• Series page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Preface
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 “A Negro and by Consequence an Alien”: Local Regulation and the Making of Race, 1500s–1700s
• Chapter 2 The “Inconvenience” of Black Freedom: Manumission, 1500s–1700s
• Chapter 3 “The Natural Right of All Mankind”: Claiming Freedom in the Age of Revolution, 1760–1830
• Chapter 4 “Rules … for Their Expulsion”: Foreclosing Freedom, 1830–1860
• Chapter 5 “Not of the Same Blood”: Policing Racial Boundaries, 1830–1860
• Conclusion: “Home-Born Citizens”: The Significance of Free People of Color
• Notes
• Index