"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
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.
