De la Fuente and Gross’ long-awaited comparative history of the legal origins of racism in Cuba, Virginia, and Louisiana foregrounds the agency of enslaved and free people of color. Grounded in decades of discovery in legal archives, Becoming Free, Becoming Black is a major work of historiographical synthesis and a rigorous work of original historical investigation. The authors argue that the law of freedom—how individuals achieve and assert free status in law—is key to understanding the production of differing paths of racial inequality in Cuba and the United States.
De la Fuente and Gross structure their comparisons over three and a half centuries in five chapters as a series of convergences and divergences. Each chapter addresses developments in Cuba, Virginia, and Louisiana separately, with discussions of transregional themes, including punishments for marronnage, intermarriage and interracial sex, freedom suits, colonization schemes, crackdowns on communities of color, manumission, and institutions created by...