David Barry Gaspar - Beyond Bondage: Free Women of Color in the Americas

BEYOND BONDAGE

THE NEW BLACK STUDIES

Series Editors

Darlene Clark Hine, Northwestern University

Dwight A. McBride, Northwestern University

Free Women of Color in the Americas

Edited by DAVID BARRY GASPAR
AND DARLENE CLARK HINE

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS

URBANA AND CHICAGO

2004 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

1 2 3 4 5 C P 5 4 3 2 1

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Beyond bondage : free women of color in the Americas / edited by David Barry Gaspar and Darlene Clark Hine.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-252-02939-9 (cl. : alk. paper)

ISBN 0-252-07194-8 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Women, BlackAmericaHistory.

2. Free blacksAmericaHistory.

3. AmericaSocial conditions.

4. AmericaRace relations. 5. SlaveryAmericaHistory.

I. Hine, Darlene Clark.

II. McBride, Dwight A.

E29.N3B49 2004

305.48'896073'09dc22 2004002533

To the memory of our valued colleague

Kimberly S. Hanger

and to

Fannie Venerable Thompson,

Lucy, Ena, and Amy Headley,

and Andrea Long

JANE LANDERS

MARA ELENA DAZ

BERNARD MOITT

DAVID BARRY GASPAR

TREVOR BURNARD

LOREN SCHWENINGER

WILMA KING

ROSEMARIJN HOEFTE AND JEAN JACQUES VRIJ

B. J. BARICKMAN AND MARTHA FEW

FLIX V. MATOS RODRGUEZ

KIMBERLY S. HANGER

MARY C. KARASCH

VIRGINIA MEACHAM GOULD

ALICE L. WOOD

The chapters in this volume explore collectively a number of issues related to the lives and experiences of women of color who were not, strictly speaking, held in full legal bondage, or who did not consider themselves to be so bound, in the slave societies of the Americas. The emphasis of discussion here is thematic. The sample of societies covered, however, is wide enough to illuminate slave societies of the Americas more generally in ways that invite comparative analysis of these societies and the place of free women of color within them. Each chapter makes its contribution to the multilayered texture of the thematic focus of the volume through treatment of the free women of color of a particular society or set of societies, illustrating that the books main title, Beyond Bondage, is meant to convey as much a statement of fact regarding legal status as an implicit question about the actual lives of free women of color.

If these women of mixed blood or of unmixed African ancestry were free, how far beyond bondage were they in reality? How far were their lives as free persons still shaped by the development of slavery? What forms did their marginality take, how effective were these forms, and how did free women of color cope with them in their struggle to survive in the shadow of slavery and at the same time achieve some progress or even limited success? How was their freedom actualized? Each chapter in this volume is constructed around careful consideration of such questions, drawing on a wide range of rich source materials that permit probing inquiry into the many meanings of freedom in slave societies for people of African descent who somehow escaped bondage and some of its devastating effects. Ultimately, in all slave societies of the Americas, free women and men of color were well aware that they and their children who were free could not completely escape the ravages of slavery and its dominating influence over slave society.

In keeping with the volumes overall thematic approach, the chapters are organized into two sections. The first, Achieving and Preserving Freedom, consists of six chapters that explore several interrelated issues and establish a foundation for the inquiries pursued in the volumes second section, Making a Life in Freedom, which consists of eight chapters. The significance of race, class, and gender is explored in some depth in each of the volumes fourteen chapters, which are concerned with at least eight societies or groups of societies within the United States, the Caribbean, and South America. Although by no means exhaustive, such coverage across the Americas is nonetheless valuable in drawing attention to many possibilities for further research in a wide field in which considerable variations and similarities can be found from one society to another, including those not covered in this volume.

The chapters clustered in the first section cover the slave societies of colonial Spanish America, Cuba, Martinique, Guadeloupe, Antigua, Jamaica, and the U.S. South and draw attention to the range of conditions under which women of color achieved freedom, legally or not, and the strategies, maneuvers, or means they deployed, particularly those whose freedom was precarious, to preserve their free status. Women of color might achieve freedom through avenues other than the polar extremities of flight or escape and legal manumission supported by official or other acceptable documentation. The pursuit of freedom through all available means is clear evidence that freedom, however precarious and challenging, was preferable to slavery. However they may have achieved freedom, free women of color were motivated by a desire to place themselves beyond slavery, and that desire might be the beginning of a long-range plan to assist family members or friends and relatives in doing the same. The actual process of becoming free could involve much calculation and patient resilience, but every opportunity for freedom was worth seizing.

For free women of color, to be no longer enslaved in the full sense of that status represented only an intermediate objective along the route from slavery to freedom that they could recognize as such. Beyond the circumstances and moment of becoming free stretched a challenging road of making freedom work to their advantage, of extending its positive possibilities as much as possible within limitations imposed by slave society and making a life in freedom that might provide resources for survival. Free women of color tried to meet these challenges in a variety of resourceful ways, some of which, it is not surprising, were more successful than others. But even among those for whom freedom meant mighty struggles and frustrations, simply being free in a wide sea of the oppressed enslaved could be a matter of much pride and satisfaction.

The chapters in the second section address these and related issues about lives shaped by and in freedom within slave society. They focus on how free women of color in the slave societies of the United States, Suriname, Brazil, Puerto Rico, colonial and antebellum New Orleans, and Peru faced up to the challenges of freedom, from economic and occupational resourcefulness to household and family organization and the pursuit of religious lives, in an impressive range of initiative. But the successes of these women of color should also remind us that slave society was not organized to facilitate the success of free people of color. Most of these people lived truly marginalized lives struggling against poverty and want. Female slaves in all of the slave societies of the Americas were more often beneficiaries of opportunities for freedom than male slaves. Having become free, however, the women faced major challenges in giving meaning to their freedom in societies that continued to be deeply influenced by the laws and practices associated with slavery, race, class, color, and gender.