Harvard Law School Association of Washington, DC

Please join us for HLSA-DC’s first Zoom book event on Sunday, June 14 from 5-6 p.m.  Ariela J. Gross (Harvard College, Class of 1987), the John B. and Alice R. Sharp Professor of Law and History at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law, and Alejandro de la Fuente, the Robert Woods Bliss Professor of Latin American History and Economics and Director of the Afro-Latin American Research Institute, Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University will be discussing their recent book and taking questions from participants. Troy Brown (HLS, Class of 2003) will moderate the discussion.  This event is co-sponsored by the HLSA Black Alumni Network and the HLSA Latino Alumni Network.

RSVPs are required for this free event; please register using the form on the left side of the page no later than June 11, 2020.  Details for joining the Zoom call will be emailed to participants.

Becoming Free, Becoming Black is available from any online book seller, including bookshop.org.  Becoming Free, Becoming Black tells the story of enslaved and free people of color who used the law to claim freedom and citizenship for themselves and their loved ones. Their communities challenged slaveholders' efforts to make blackness synonymous with slavery.

Looking closely at three slave societies - Cuba, Virginia, and Louisiana - Alejandro de la Fuente and Ariela J. Gross demonstrate that the law of freedom - not slavery - established the meaning of blackness in law. Contests over freedom determined whether and how it was possible to move from slave to free status, and whether claims to citizenship would be tied to racial identity. Laws regulating the lives and institutions of free people of color created the boundaries between black and white, the rights reserved to white people, and the degradations imposed only on black people.