Degrees of Freedom: Louisiana and Cuba After Slavery (review)

For scholars of Latin America, the expectations surrounding Rebecca Scott's long-awaited Degrees of Freedom were so high it would seem almost impossible for the actual book to live up to the anticipation; yet this magnificent work will not only satisfy Latin Americanists but also demand attention from the much larger (and historically insular) scholarly audience of U.S. historians. Degrees of Freedom eloquently explores the political, social, and economic worlds of Cuba and Louisiana after slavery, bringing Scott's nuanced interpretative lens to both societies, while also setting a new standard for comparative and connected history that will force historians of the United States to engage Latin American history (and historiography)—without which so much of U.S. history is incomplete—as well as to reconsider their assumptions about post-emancipation society. As in her celebrated Slave Emancipation in Cuba, Scott places slaves and former slaves at the center of her history, while also attentively pursuing how larger structures abetted or inhibited these actors' pursuit of citizenship. Scott is careful to point out the indeterminacy of particular historical moments (which was, after all, how the historical actors themselves experienced their world), but is also not afraid to ascribe causation to various factors in order to explain the differences of post-emancipation Cuba and Louisiana. Instead of pointing to one cause, Scott tries to consider each society holistically—looking at the law, economic conditions, politics, national and racial ideologies, warfare and especially the distinct post-emancipation labor experience in the two areas that emerges as a surprising and convincing factor shaping not only the working day but also the political possibilities of people of color in each society.

Scott begins with a comparison of the two regions under slavery, noting that while labor experiences were similar, the conditions of freedom were not. While slaves often would have had daily contact with free people of color in Cuba, in Louisiana it was possible for some slaves to never meet a legally free black man or woman. Scott then proceeds to show how African-Americans in Louisiana pursued "civil, political and public rights" (p. 44) after the war and the links between debates over citizenship and the reconstruction of labor relations. However, as the century wore on, the white supremacist project—involving "the subordination of black laborers, forced segregation in public spaces, and the suppression of black voters" (p. 90)—would triumph. At the same time, slaves gained their freedom in Cuba, and then participated in a revolution committed to independence and racial equality that would shape a much different post-emancipation society than Louisiana. While African-Americans from Louisiana would volunteer in 1898 to fight in Cuba, and once there witness a very different working of the "color line" (p. 173), at home a state constitutional convention would for all intents and purposes disenfranchise them. U.S. authorities in Cuba intended to do the same, but while disenfranchising schemes lasted over a half century in Louisiana, they fell apart almost immediately in Cuba. There, a more racially mixed workforce in the sugar industry, increased worker mobility, and the integrated Cuban patriot army provided the basis for cross-race organizing and the promotion of a vision of the nation that prevented open removal of blacks and mulatos from public life.

Cuba's commitment to equality would be tested in 1912, when activists hoping to organize an Independent Party of Color were met with brutal state repression, the likes of which were unseen in Louisiana (if only because blacks organizing of such a party was unthinkable there). Yet, almost immediately Cubans started to reconstruct a public politics that celebrated cross-racial alliances and rejected overt racism, branding the state authorities responsible as butchers. Even the racists who repressed the Independent Party of Color's revolt used a language of antiracial patriotism to condemn the Party, which would ironically later prevent them from employing the same type...