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Podcast: New Books in Caribbean Studies
Episode: A. de la Fuente and A. J. Gross, "Becoming Free, Becoming Black: Race, Freedom, and Law in Cuba, Virginia, and Louisiana" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
Description: How did Africans become 'blacks' in the Americas? Becoming Free, Becoming Black: Race, Freedom, and Law in Cuba, Virginia, and Louisiana (Cambridge University Press, 2020) 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...