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Book Cover
E-book
Author Welch, Kimberly M., author.

Title Black litigants in the antebellum American South / Kimberly M. Welch
Published Chapel Hill : The University of North Carolina Press, [2018]
©2018

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Description 1 online resource (xiv, 306 pages) : illustrations, maps
Series The John Hope Franklin series in African American history and culture
John Hope Franklin series in African American history and culture.
Contents Cover -- Half Title -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: A Bind of Their Own Making -- PART ONE -- 1 Telling Stories -- 2 The Rhetoric of Reputation -- 3 Advocacy -- PART TWO -- 4 Your Word Is your Bond -- 5 The Sanctity of Property -- 6 Subjects of Selfhood -- 7 For Family and Property -- Afterword: From Property to Plessy -- Appendix: Researching Black Litigants -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W
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"-- Provided by publisher
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Online resource (HeinOnline, April 28, 2023)
Subject African Americans -- Louisiana -- History -- To 1863
African Americans -- Mississippi -- History -- To 1863
African Americans -- Louisiana -- Social conditions -- 19th century
African Americans -- Mississippi -- Social conditions -- 19th century
Actions and defenses -- Lousiana
Actions and defenses -- Mississippi
SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Discrimination & Race Relations.
SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Minority Studies.
HISTORY -- United States -- 19th Century.
Actions and defenses
African Americans
African Americans -- Social conditions
Louisiana
Mississippi
Genre/Form Electronic books
History
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9781469636467
1469636468
9781469636450
146963645X