Examines the women who became involved in Cuba's slave resistance movements of 1843 and 1844, drawing attention to those who molded that resistance in visible and public ways and those whose involvement has often been obscured or unnoticed. The narratives created around Fermina and Carlota Lucumf, two leading figures in the 1843 insurgencies, both rupture and complicate the masculine discourse around slave-movement leadership that has been central to historiographies of slave rebellion.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
197 p., Focusing on slave revolts that took place in Barbados in 1816, in Demerara in 1823, and in Jamaica in 1831--32, identifies four key aspects in British abolitionist propaganda regarding Caribbean slavery: the denial that antislavery activism prompted slave revolts, the attempt to understand and recount slave uprisings from the slaves' perspectives, the portrayal of slave rebels as victims of armed suppressors and as agents of the antislavery movement, and the presentation of revolts as a rationale against the continuance of slavery.
Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
326 p., Shows how gender shaped urban routes to freedom for the enslaved during the process of gradual emancipation in Cuba and Brazil, which occurred only after the rest of Latin America had abolished slavery and even after the American Civil War. Focusing on late nineteenth-century Havana and Rio de Janeiro, Cowling argues that enslaved women played a dominant role in carving out freedom for themselves and their children through the courts.
Provides information on the significance of the Underground Railroad, which carried slaves to freedom across the Rio Grande from Mexico. Overview of slavery in Mexico and Texas; Slave ownership in the United States; Demographic information on Texas; Informal network of transportation for the Black Seminoles and other Indians;