Degrees of Freedom: Louisiana and Cuba After Slavery

Tracing the parallel histories of post-slavery Louisiana and Cuba, Scott, a University of Michigan professor of history and law, uses court cases, activist profiles and heart-pounding runaway narratives to slowly draw the reader into the lives of slaves, freedmen and slaveowners (both black and white) of the late nineteenth century Gulf, but dense clots of legal-historic scholarship can prove difficult to navigate for readers not already studied on the subject. Her back and forth cultural contrasts between Louisiana and Cuba are well-crafted, early on laying out her tale's direction: ""In Louisiana itself, the space for the discussion of civic and political equality had narrowed almost to the vanishing point. In Cuba in that same year, the space for discussion was still quite open, and different groups of activists debated...the best strategy for asserting their full rights."" Though similar economically (both Cuba and Louisiana had agricultural economies that heavily depended on slave labor), the two areas' divergent political climates at the turn of the century saw Louisiana's blacks continue to lose rights, while across the Gulf, voter rolls swelled. Casual history readers may get bogged down by Scott's text, as it assumes more than a nodding familiarity with court precedents and nineteenth century legislation, but oral histories of slaves and their descendants provide refreshing counterpoints to the admirable, though daunting, scholarship.