Abstract: | In 18th-century New Orleans, the legal testimony of some 150 enslaved women & men - like the testimony of free colonists - was meticulously recorded & preserved. Questioned in criminal trials as defendants, victims, & witnesses about attacks, murders, robberies, & escapes, they answered with stories about themselves, stories that rebutted the premise on which slavery was founded. Focusing on four especially dramatic court cases, 'Voices of the Enslaved' draws us into Louisiana's courtrooms, prisons, courtyards, plantations, bayous, & convents to understand how the enslaved viewed & experienced their worlds. As they testified, these individuals charted their movement between West African, indigenous, & colonial cultures; they pronounced their moral & religious values; & they registered their responses to labour, to violence, & to the intimate & familial bonds they sought to create & protect. |
