Making Race in the Courtroom (eBook)

The Legal Construction of Three Races in Early New Orleans

Kenneth R. Aslakson (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2014
Nyu Press (Verlag)
978-0-8147-2486-6 (ISBN)

Infos

No American city's history better illustrates both thepossibilities for alternative racial models and the role of the law in shapingracial identity than New Orleans, Louisiana, which prior to the Civil War washome to America s most privileged community of people of African descent. Inthe eyes of the law, New Orleans s free people of color did not belong to thesame race as enslaved Africans and African-Americans. While slaves were negroes, free people of color were gensde couleur libre, creoles of color, or simply creoles. New Orleans screoles of color remained legally and culturally distinct from negroes throughout most of the nineteenth century until state mandated segregationlumped together descendants of slaves with descendants of free people of color.Much of the recent scholarship on NewOrleans examines what race relations in theantebellum period looked as well as why antebellum Louisiana s gens de couleur enjoyed rights andprivileges denied to free blacks throughout most of the United States. This book, however, is less concerned with the what and why questions than with how peopleof color, acting within institutions of power, shaped those institutions in ways beyondtheir control. As its title suggests, Making Race in the Courtroom argues that race is best understood notas a category, but as a process. It seeks to demonstrate the role offree people of African-descent, interacting within the courts, in this process.

Inhalt

Contents  Acknowledgments ix  Introduction 1  1. The Gulf and Its City 17  2. A Legal System in Flux 44  3. “We Shall Serve with Fidelity and Zeal” 67  4. Outside the Bonds of Matrimony 98  5. Owning So as Not to Be Owned 127  6. “When the Question Is Slavery or Freedom” 153  Epilogue: From Adele to Plessy 185  Notes 191  Index 241  About the Author 249 

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 26.9.2014
• Verlagsort: New York
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Militärgeschichte
• Themenwelt: Recht / Steuern ► Rechtsgeschichte
• ISBN-10: 0-8147-2486-8 / 0814724868
• ISBN-13: 978-0-8147-2486-6 / 9780814724866