Ariela J. Gross: Becoming Free, Becoming Black - Race, Freedom, and Law in Cuba, Virginia, and Louisiana

How did Africans become 'blacks' in the Americas? 'Becoming Free, Becoming Black' (Cambridge University Press, 2020) 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.

In the event, Prof. Gross will present her book followed by a discussion by:

Prof. Ehud Toledano, Department of Middle East and African History, TAU

Dr. Ely Aaronson, Faculty of Law, University of Haifa

Dr. Yael Sterhell, History Department and the Department of English and American Studies, TAU

Moderator: Prof. Ron Harris, Faculty of Law, TAU

Full program here.

The event will be held online via Zoom. Please register at https://tinyurl.com/3p5j8fbt

​Ariela J. Gross is the John B. and Alice R. Sharp Professor of Law and History and the Co-Director of the Center for Law, History, and Culture at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law.
She is the author of What Blood Won’t Tell: A History of Race on Trial in America (2008) and Double Character: Slavery and Mastery in the Antebellum Southern Courtroom (2000).