Black litigants in the antebellum American South /
This work explores free and enslaved African Americans' involvement in a broad range of civil actions in the Natchez district of Mississippi and Louisiana between 1800 and 1860. Though the antebellum southern courts have long been understood as institutions supporting the class interests and th...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Chapel Hill :
University of North Carolina Press,
[2018]
|
| Series: | John Hope Franklin series in African American history and culture.
|
| Subjects: |
| Summary: | This work explores free and enslaved African Americans' involvement in a broad range of civil actions in the Natchez district of Mississippi and Louisiana between 1800 and 1860. Though the antebellum southern courts have long been understood as institutions supporting the class interests and the racial ideologies of the planter and merchant elite, Kimberly Welch shows how black litigants found ways to advocate for themselves even within a racist system. To understand their success, Welch argues that we must understand the language that they used, the language of property, in particular. Because private property and slavery were fundamentally linked in the minds of slave owners, the term 'property' contained a group of metaphors that underwrote a set of white, male claims about autonomy, membership, citizenship and personhood. |
|---|---|
| Physical Description: | xiv, 306 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: | 9781469636436 1469636433 9781469636443 1469636441 |