Judith Kelleher Schafer

Becoming Free, Remaining Free

Manumission and Enslavement in New Orleans, 1846--1862

• Broschiertes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

For more than 150 years, the tales of hundreds of slaves and free people of color who used the judicial system to negotiate their freedom lay buried deep within the dusty records of the New Orleans district courts. Then Judith Kelleher Schafer spent fourteen years poring over Minute Books and trial transcripts, uncovering for the first time the details of these fascinating cases. In Becoming Free, Remaining Free, Schafer presents her findings and offers a profound analysis of slavery and manumission in the Crescent City. Louisiana state law was unique in allowing slaves to contract for their freedom and to initiate a lawsuit for liberty. Schafer describes the ingenious and remarkably sophisticated ways slaves used the legal system to gain their independence and find a voice in a society that ordinarily gave them none. Showing that remaining free was often as challenging as becoming free she also recounts numerous cases in which free people of color were forced to use the courts to prove their status. She further documents seventeen free blacks who, when faced with deportation, amazingly sued to enslave themselves. Schafer's impressive detective work achieves a rare feat in the hist

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Louisiana State University Press
• Seitenzahl: 232
• Erscheinungstermin: 1. Mai 2003
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 229mm x 152mm x 13mm
• Gewicht: 343g
• ISBN-13: 9780807128800
• ISBN-10: 0807128805
• Artikelnr.: 22331254

Autorenporträt

Judith Kelleher Schafer is the author of several books, including Slavery, the Civil Law, and the Supreme Court of Louisiana and Brothels, Depravity, and Abandoned Women: Illegal Sex in Antebellum New Orleans. She lives in New Orleans with her husband.