Black litigants in the antebellum American South /

"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...

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Bibliographic Details
Online Access: Access full-text online via JSTOR
Author / Contributor: Welch, Kimberly M. (Author)
Imprint: Chapel Hill : The University of North Carolina Press, [2018]
Format: Electronic
Language:English
Subjects:
Series:John Hope Franklin series in African American history and culture.
Description
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"--
Physical Description:1 online resource (xiv, 306 pages) : illustrations, maps
Bibliography:Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN:9781469636467
1469636468
9781469636450
146963645X
Source of Description, Etc. Note:Online resource (HeinOnline, April 28, 2023)