How did Africans become 'blacks' in the Americas? Becoming Free,
Becoming Black tells the story of enslaved and free people of
color who used the law to claim freedom and citizenship for
themselves and their loved ones. Their communities challenged
slaveholders' efforts to make blackness synonymous with slavery.
Looking closely at three slave societies - Cuba, Virginia, and
Louisiana - Alejandro de la Fuente and Ariela J. Gross demonstrate
that the law of freedom - not slavery - established the meaning of
blackness in law. Contests over freedom determined whether and how it
was possible to move from slave to free status, and whether claims to
citizenship would be tied to racial identity. Laws regulating the
lives and institutions of free people of color created the boundaries
between black and white, the rights reserved to white people, and the
degradations imposed only on black people.