Becoming Free, Becoming Black: Race, Freedom, and Law in Cuba, Virginia, and Louisiana

by Alejandro de la Fuente, Ariela J. Gross

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.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Law, Race, American History

294 pages, Hardcover

First published January 16, 2020

Reviews

[Eve · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alejandro de la Fuente and Ariela J. Gross's Becoming Fee, Becoming Black: Race, Freedom, and Law in Cuba, Virginia, and Louisiana is an academic deep-dive into the history of the relationship of 'blackness' and slavery, particularly in legal precedence, in historical slave societies in Cuba, Virginia, and Louisiana. The beauty this treatment on the subject of slavery is how it highlights the efforts within each slave society from the enslaved to gain their freedom whereas most other books on the subject give more focus to the cessation of slavery from the initiative of the 'whites' or Europeans.

This is not an enjoyable read. The writing quite challenging and academic in tone and the topic is heavy. However, it's an important read and one that will serve to enrich scholar's understanding of the topic.

Thank you to Alejandro de la Fuente and Ariela J. Gross, Cambridge University Press, and NetGalley for allowing me access to the electronic advance release copy of book for review. As always all opinions are my own.

[Eva · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent book that chronicles how free people of colour got their freedom in Cuba, as well as the US states of Virginia and Louisiana mostly in the 1800s. It traces how Cuba's Iberian influence meant that they already had their own set of codes and laws for the treatment of people and colour as well as a slavery system and contrasts this with how things operated in Virginia and Louisiana, and how the differences in British and French law as well as Spanish added to how the white lawmakers and influencers created their systems by which to "classify" (for lack of a better term) what constituted a black person at a certain time and what did not. The book also chronicles cases of people who tried to prove in a court of law that they were white, and the parameters used to establish whiteness, such as "virtuous deeds" and respect among other whites, etc.

It was an eye-opening look at a sub-topic of this historical area, and I appreciated that it was written with the general reader in mind and not too academic or stuffy, and it did not use overly complicated language. I also liked the division overall of how the book was organized and the order in which ideas were discussed. As well, it was helpful from the introductory material to know more about the scholars involved and their respective backgrounds.

Overall, I feel that readers who want to know more about this subject will have excellent source material to engage with in "Becoming Free, Becoming Black."

[Sasha (bahareads) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alejandro de la Fuente and Ariela Gross tell the story of how the initiatives of enslaved and free people of colour in the Americas changed and shaped the laws of slavery and freedom. From a legal perspective Becoming Free, Becoming Black shows how people of colour used the flexibility of the law to create communities and freedom for themselves and their families that challenged slaveholders’ desire to make blackness synonymous with slavery.

Through this study of the Americas, de la Fuente and Gross challenge the traditional historiographical perception of Latin America being a racially fluid society and the British colonies having a harsher racial binary. Using a comparative framework, the research instead indicates the differences between the locations studied – Cuba, Virginia, and Louisiana – come from how white elites successfully connected blackness with enslavement and whiteness with citizenship. De la Fuente and Gross present a bottom-up perspective by using the actions of enslaved and free people as a guide for their primary and archival research. The source used includes local court records, original trial records of freedom suits, free black and enslaved records, and petitions. By using a broad definition of law, codes and royal edicts are contrasted with local trials, statutes, and adjudications creating a broad net for source material. Gross and de la Fuente sum up their approach by assuming the “mutual constitutivness” of law and culture. The law is shaped by culture as culture is in turn shaped by the law.

Gross and de la Fuente present their argument well throughout the text. Each chapter points back to their main idea of people of colour using the law to navigate and negotiate for their own freedom. From chapter one they show the repressive legal regimes of all three locations rested on blackness becoming synonymous with enslavement. Using the issue of legal and social precedents, manumission, revolts, and colonization with examples from legal cases the authors prove by the 1850s all three studied areas were mature slave societies with legal gaps that free and enslaved people of colour could navigate. The differences in all three locations were the “regime” of race, not slavery, and the development of the law of freedom

Blackness being linked to degraded activities or social norms show that blackness has always been relegated as less than white within mixed societies. The association of blackness with incivility can be seen in society today. Blackness – whether it is the natural appearance of Black people, their pattern of speech, or any other aspect of a Black person – has been designated as less than their white counterparts. This study of Gross and de la Fuente shows that anti-blackness is written into the very legal code of the societies that are still around today. In the conclusion of Becoming Free, Becoming Black, it is stated laws regulating free people of colour served as legal templates during the post-emancipation era of these societies. Anti-blackness is built into the legal foundations of many societies today.

[Larry Bassett · Rating 5 out of 5]

This audible book traces the legal history of blacks in Virginia and Louisiana and Cuba in the 16th and 17th and 18th and early 19th century. It gathers its data from actual legal files in those locations in dealing with many of the issues of slavery and the effort of Slaves to leave slavery.

The book elucidates many surprising details of lives of Black people and mixed race people in a comparative and contrasting way.

Comments from Copilot AI.

“Becoming Free, Becoming Black: Race, Freedom, and Law in Cuba, Virginia, and Louisiana” explores how Africans became ‘blacks’ in the Americas. The book, authored by Alejandro de la Fuente and Ariela J. Gross, delves into the story of enslaved and free people of color who utilized the law to claim freedom and citizenship. It highlights how these communities contested the efforts of slaveholders to equate blackness with slavery. By examining the legal histories of Cuba, Virginia, and Louisiana, the authors argue that it was the law of freedom, not the law of slavery, that defined blackness. The book also discusses how laws affecting the lives of free people of color drew the lines between black and white, delineating the rights reserved for white people and the degradations imposed on black people.

[Justin · Rating 4 out of 5]

***I was granted an ARC of this via Netgalley from the publisher.***

When we think of slaves obtaining freedom, in general we only think of them obtaining it by running away, buying their freedom, being freed in the will their owner after death or rebelling. However, their were other ways in which slaves gained their freedom and how they were able to obtain and the ease with which they could obtain it was based on the slave society in which they lived. This is explored in the book Becoming Free, Becoming Black: Race, Freedom, and Law in Cuba, Virginia, and Louisiana by Alejandro de la Fuente and Ariela J Gross. In this book, the efforts of slaves to become free and how society viewed their attempts to gain freedom and their status afterward are examined in three separate slave societies: Cuba, Virginia and Louisiana. The authors do an excellent job at showing why these slave societies were different. They also shed light on how slaves took advantage of laws made to closely link black skin to slavery to their advantage to argue for their freedom on legal grounds. From claiming white and Native American descent to fighting how much their freedom should cost, slaves did what they could with the legal tools available to them. This book was very educational and presents it information in a clear and concise way. Definitely, a book to read if one is interested in how slave societies work and how slaves adapted and found a way to carve out a space for themselves in them.

Rating: 4.5/5 stars. Would highly recommend to a friend.

[Enobong · Rating 3 out of 5]

A comprehensive and academic look at the road to freedom for many enslaved and what achieving that freedom meant. It's a common misconception that enslaved African people in the Americas and the Caribbean merely accepted their fate of enslavement, waiting passively for the 19th century when Europeans would finally see the immorality of slavery. In reality, enslaved people fought against slavery from the beginning, both violently and through the legal courts. It was a struggle they endured for the full 300 years of the transatlantic slave trade.

BECOMING FREE, BECOMING BLACK looks at the societies of Cuba, Virginia and Louisiana to investigate the journey to freedom for enslaved peoples in these communities and the difficulties those in power had in accepting the status of freed-person for those who had brought in as slaves. This led to a classification of "black" that defined formerly enslaved people in a way that made it legally acceptable to deny them the rights of citizens.

This book is great because it shines a light on a part of history that is often and pushed aside. The fight for freedom was not done on behalf of enslaved people as they stood by passively but one that they began and were gradually supported in. It is incredibly academic, which at times might be difficult to read if you are unused to reading dense academia but incredibly informative.

[Kara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Becoming Free, Becoming Black is a deeply researched non fiction that provides the reader a detailed understanding of the legal and cultural aspects of slavery. The book is, as its description states, a primary source review of legal precedent around slavery in Cuba, Louisiana, and Virginia.

My personal preference for historical non fiction is more towards a writing style that feels more like a novel than a literature review. I also received the book as an advanced reader ebook so it lacked many final edits and touches that would make reading an ebook easier. I make an assumption here that the final version will include a table of contents, hyperlinked footnotes, and formatted tables and charts. I know that the lack of these added to the challenge of reading such a richly researched book.

I found the stories of the people throughout history to be highly interesting but I didn't find the book to be easily accessible and readable. I found myself skimming a great deal through densely packed paragraphs. As an academic myself, I can appreciate the writing style. And I find the subject matter incredibly important. However, overall I found this book to be a worthwhile, but challenging read.

[Porter Broyles · Rating 3 out of 5]

I so wanted to love this book.

It's the second book from the "Studies in Legal History" series that I've read. The first book, Secession on Trial: The Treason Prosecution of Jefferson Davis was absolutely superb.

This book was tougher to read.

It covered some good material and provided a solid historical framework to understanding how the issue of race/slavery was formed in Virginia, Louisianna, and Cuba.

But it was a chore to finish.

If you are a hard core fanatic about history and the law pertaining to race, then this is a book that you have to read. It covers 3 distinct regions and how/why they evolved differently. It provides tons of case studies from those areas from the 18th and 19th centuries.

But if you are not a hard core fanatic, then I'd pass on this book.

*I* enjoyed it, but I can't say that I'd recommend it.

[Frank · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Becoming Free, Becoming Black, Alejandro De La Fuente and Ariela Gross explore how Africans in America became “black,” slavery became racialized, and “blackness as a debased category” became equivalent to enslavement (5). The co-authors make their arguments by conducting a comparative study between Cuba, Louisiana, and Virginia. They primarily interrogate this topic through a legal lens, revealing that “it was not the law of slavery but the law of freedom that was most crucial for the creation of racial regimes in law” (4). The different legal regimes in the three locations—particularly the disparate approaches to manumission and freedom suits—was ultimately decisive in whether being black was coterminous with being a slave. Historians often describe the concept of race and racism as a social construct but at times fail to explain how this abstraction is tangibly constructed. However, Fuente and Gross brilliantly describe how various actors between 1700-1860 used the legal system to turn a theoretical concept into a practical reality.
​The authors organize this book chronologically to explain how each of the three societies changed their legal regimes of slavery over time. Beginning in the colonial era, they depict how the different legal systems shaped the way that each society viewed the issue of race and slavery. When early Spanish colonist arrived in Cuba, they brought with them an already established Iberian legal tradition that legalized racial distinctions and marginalized people of African descent, relegating them to the lowest rung on the social hierarchy. As early as 1550, Cubans treated the terms “slave” and “black” as synonymous. Paradoxically, this well-established Iberian legal tradition also included well-defined practices of manumission and self-purchase that existed independent of race. The laws and customs surrounding manumission— “the law of freedom”—in Cuba is what would ultimately lead to a relatively large population of free blacks, preventing Cuban society from developing a “perfectly dichotomous world” that distinguished between free whites and enslaved blacks (220).
​Contrastingly, in Virginia, “distinctions of race were not systematized in law until slave status was set in stone decades after the colony’s settlement” (10). Unlike Iberian law, the English legal tradition did not conflate race and slave status. However, by the late seventeenth century—motivated by a desire to decrease the strength of a multiracial coalition that manifested in Bacon’s Rebellion—Virginia began passing legislation that conflated being black with slave status. By the turn of the eighteenth century, Virginia also made it increasingly difficult for black slaves to seek manumission and self-purchase. While manumission was originally considered a private matter in Viriginia—as it was in Cuba—legislators made it a public matter in which the courts and local government had to approve requests. Additionally, as the century dragged on into the Revolutionary period, events like the Haitian Revolution and Nat Turner’s Rebellion continued to strike fear in elite white planters who wanted to limit the interaction between black slaves and free blacks. They promoted policies of colonization—where free blacks would be shipped to Liberia—and required free blacks to move out of the state within a certain period of receiving their freedom. Fuente and Gross argue that these legal tactics were aimed at racializing slavery by removing the presence of a free black population.
​In Louisiana, Fuente and Gross explain that since the French colonized the area at a much later point in the development of their empire, its earliest colonizers brought with them a robust legal tradition that included codes for slaves and “noirs” (10). While Louisianna had a similar policy to Cuba’s that saw being black as one in the same with being a slave, the two regions diverged in its views on manumission. In this aspect, Louisiana was more similar to Virginia in that it quickly imposed local laws that restricted manumission with the goal of creating a “racial order based on black debasement” (50). While there was a brief in Louisiana when manumission laws loosened—when France sold the territory to Spain and the Iberian legal tradition of manumission took hold—when the French sold the territory to the U.S., restrictive policies resumed. Like in Virginia, during the mid-nineteenth century, scientific racism coupled with fears of slave rebellions caused Louisiana to increasingly marginalize black people by eliminating free black communities, their right to bear arms, own property, and “mingle with whites” (181). By the beginning of the American Civil War, this transition to a racialized slave society and the debasement of all blacks was complete.
​This comparative study that includes a hybrid legal tradition found in Louisiana makes a key intervention in the field as it “challenges traditional perceptions of a contrast between a racially fluid system in Latin America…and a harsher binary system in the British colonies” (5). While this book is synthetic in the sense that it covers three distinct locations across three centuries, it is firmly grounded in primary sources found in Cuba, Louisiana, Virginia, and Spain. The authors particularly rely on court documents, legislative petitions, freedom suits, and notarial records. This is a well-written and accessible work that is crucial for anyone interested in how the these three regions and the United States developed a racialized society.

[MIKE Watkins Jr. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Solid/informal book about how African Americans fought for their freedom through out history.

I mean we learn about the civil rights movement and what not.....but what we don't learn about in school is about a sub class of African Americans known as "free slaves" that were able to free them selves from the clutches of slavery. This subclass even assisted other slaves in escaping slavery as well. It was amazing to learn that there was a subclass of African Americans that had access to property, Lawyers, occupational spaces, commanding positions, and even slaves. Yep some free African Americans made the decision to own slaves...and free them eventually as well.


The book focuses on Havana Cub, areas in Louisiana like Baton Rouge, and counties in Virginia. Each region because of varying customs, religions, and laws handled slavery differently...and it was interesting to see how as time progressed....each area treated slaves and free African Americans in their societies. The one commonality however...is that all 3 areas over time introduced laws that slowly treated closer towards equating a slave with a free African American. But regardless of what laws were introduced the free African American subclass would continue to remain and fight for fair treatment.

The negative for me is that the 2nd half of this book isnt' as interesting as the first half. I would recommend reading up to idk....well I had the kindle version so in the kindle version I would say stop at like page 140 or so.

[Rt · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot of fascinating detail about how the laws surrounding freedom for enslaved people (including laws about interracial marriage, manumission and self-purchase) constructed the meaning of slavery and of race. Where there were more free people of color and a tradition of less-racialized slavery, in Cuba, enslavers found it harder to make race and slavery coterminous conditions, despite attempts to borrow from the British/Americans the concepts they developed to degrade blacks. The laws governing free people of color—suppressing churches, schools, and militias/ownership of firearms and dogs—became models for Jim Crow after the American Civil War. Tidbit that stood out to me most, showing the age of the argument “we wouldn’t have needed to deny you rights if you hadn’t been so mean to us!” is a quote from a New Orleans observer in 1856: “It is probable that the South would have continued merely to apologize but for the denunciations of the abolitionists, which led to the... consequent conviction that slavery, as it exists in the United States, in all its aspects, moral, social, and political, is not inconsistent with justice, reason, or religion.”

[Shuaronda Loney · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was insightful. There was so much information I did not know about slavery in Virginia, Louisiana and Cuba. It was interesting to read how many laws and actions were parallel throughout the three regions. It also made me emotional when I think about our ancestors went through all in the name of equality. It is appalling to think humans could treat other humans in such a disgusting manner all for wealth and status. I liked that the authors did not give there opinions but stuck to the facts and let the reader come to their own conclusions. I would highly recommend this book especially if one does not have in-depth information about the true history of slavery.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

de la Fuente and Gross have written an interesting comparative history of the development of race and race law in three slave societies - Cuba, Virginia and Louisiana. They do a good job throughout of explaining how the larger realities of the three areas (demographic, political, economic) shaped the development of law. While this is definitely a heady book, not intended for a general audience, it offers a helpful corrective to the common misconception that ideas about race were natural and universal - the authors show pretty convincingly that they were born out of specific conditions and with the intent to achieve specific goals.

[Kiera Lynch · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received a copy of this book provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest opinion.


This is a great historical book on the history of how slaves in Cuba, America were freed. I enjoyed the loads of information this book had to offer. However, the topic of the book is very heavy. When we speak of slavery we hardly tell the story of the slave. What is being told is the story from the enslavers perception. This book explains the life of a slave and the societies built to maintain.

A must read to understand the identity of enslaved Africans.

[IquoImoh Terry · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book needed In African American and Latino studies. A must read to understand identity and how Africans brought to land for economic reasons became blacks.