Beyond Bondage: Free Women of Color in the Americas

Preface

preface 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 theAmericas.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 book’s 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 unmixedAfrican 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 volume’s 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 x Preface foundation for the inquiries pursued in the volume’s 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 volume’s 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 SpanishAmerica,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...