In recent years, many historians have examined freedom suits to understand African Americans’ experiences participating in legal systems across the antebellum South. Given that this body of scholarship exists, this chapter turns to Louisiana’s freedom suits with a different set of concerns. The main question it asks is: What kinds of freedom did freedom suits engender for African Americans in antebellum Louisiana? Most narratives about black freedom seekers in U.S. courtrooms typically do not highlight the aftermath of freedom suit plaintiffs because of the difficulty of coming across these individuals in archives beyond the court records. Therefore, this chapter considers court records from freedom suits alongside indenture contracts, notarial records, and city jail records to illuminate the experiences of indebtedness that some black litigants experienced as a result of winning their freedom in courtrooms. In doing so, this chapter aims to restore African Americans’ actual lives and labors to freedom suit historiography and explore how race, especially blackness, informed evolving ideas about the relationship between indebtedness and freedom in the antebellum U.S. South.

Pre-Circulated Paper

The pre-circulated paper will be available one-week prior to the workshop. The paper will be available to the Princeton University community via SharePoint. All others should request a copy of the paper by emailing Sally Yi.