Degrees of Freedom: Louisiana and Cuba After Slavery.

Sanders, James E.

Degrees of Freedom: Louisiana and Cuba After Slavery. By Rebecca J. Scott (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005. xi plus 365 pp. $29.95).

For scholars of Latin America, the expectations surrounding Rebecca Scott's long-awaited Degrees of Freedom were so high it would seem almost impossible for the actual book to live up to the anticipation; yet this magnificent work will not only satisfy Latin Americanists but also demand attention from the much larger (and historically insular) scholarly audience of U.S. historians. Degrees of Freedom eloquently explores the political, social, and economic worlds of Cuba and Louisiana after slavery, bringing Scott's nuanced interpretative lens to both societies, while also setting a new standard for comparative and connected history that will force historians of the United States to engage Latin American history (and historiography)--without which so much of U.S. history is incomplete--as well as to reconsider their assumptions about post-emancipation society. As in her celebrated Slave Emancipation in Cuba, Scott places slaves and former slaves at the center of her history, while also attentively pursuing how larger structures abetted or inhibited these actors' pursuit of citizenship. Scott is careful to point out the indeterminacy of particular historical moments (which was, after all, how the historical actors themselves experienced their world), but is also not afraid to ascribe causation to various factors in order to explain the differences of post-emancipation Cuba and Louisiana. Instead of pointing to one cause, Scott tries to consider each society holistically--looking at the law, economic conditions, politics, national and racial ideologies, warfare and especially the distinct post-emancipation labor experience in the two areas that emerges as a surprising and convincing factor shaping not only the working day but also the political possibilities of people of color in each society.

Scott begins with a comparison of the two regions under slavery, noting that while labor experiences were similar, the conditions of freedom were not. While slaves often would have had daily contact with free people of color in Cuba, in Louisiana it was possible for some slaves to never meet a legally free black man or woman. Scott then proceeds to show how African-Americans in Louisiana pursued "civil, political and public rights" (p. 44) after the war and the links between debates over citizenship and the reconstruction of labor relations. However, as the century wore on, the white supremacist project--involving "the subordination of black laborers, forced segregation in public spaces, and the suppression of black voters" (p. 90)--would triumph. At the same time, slaves gained their freedom in Cuba, and then participated in a revolution committed to independence and racial equality that would shape a much different post-emancipation society than Louisiana. While African-Americans from Louisiana would volunteer in 1898 to fight in Cuba, and once there witness a very different working of the "color line" (p. 173), at home a state constitutional convention would for all intents and purposes disenfranchise them. U.S. authorities in Cuba intended to do the same, but while disenfranchising schemes lasted over a half century in Louisiana, they fell apart almost immediately in Cuba. There, a more racially mixed workforce in the sugar industry, increased worker mobility, and the integrated Cuban patriot army provided the basis for cross-race organizing and the promotion of a vision of the nation that prevented open removal of blacks and mulatos from public life.

Cuba's commitment to equality would be tested in 1912, when activists hoping to organize an Independent Party of Color were met with brutal state repression, the likes of which were unseen in Louisiana (if only because blacks organizing of such a party was unthinkable there). Yet, almost immediately Cubans started to reconstruct a public politics that celebrated cross-racial alliances and rejected overt racism, branding the state authorities responsible as butchers. Even the racists who repressed the Independent Party of Color's revolt used a language of antiracial patriotism to condemn the Party, which would ironically later prevent them from employing the same type of white-supremacist rhetoric that ruled in Louisiana. Thus Scott refutes scholarly work that sees Cubans' public commitment to racial equality as largely a myth to hide racist repression, convincingly showing the power of the myth to counter-act overt racism, in sharp contrast to Louisiana, where overt racism defined politics.

The only possible complaint is that the reader is left wanting more. Perhaps Scott might have gone further in stressing the larger meanings of Louisiana's exclusion of people of color compared to Cuba. While admirably wanting to show the effective agency of Louisiana's African-Americans, the reader generally feels exhausted by the constant repression they faced; often their only success seemed to be a willingness to continue the struggle. Scott shows how activists kept up the fight with "forlorn hope and noble despair" (p. 93), arguing this struggle disproved the wife of a plantation owner who claimed that whites had triumphed for "the next 50 years" (p. 87) after the massacre of black strikers at Thibodaux. But this assertion of white rule seems more correct than not, especially compared to black successes in Cuba. In the face of a still rampant U.S. exceptionalism concerning the development of democracy and republicanism in the Americas, pointing out more directly the implications of Scott's story of the relative success and progress of Cuba versus Louisiana would be a welcome corrective. In addition, Latin Americanists might rue the absence of Brazil (included in a 1994 American Historical Review article that previewed some of this book's themes); but as illuminating as Brazil's inclusion might have been as comparison, it would not have had the same degree of connections with Louisiana and Cuba as those places had with each other.

Indeed, throughout the book, Scott not only compares Louisiana and Cuba, but shows how her historical protagonists also looked to each other's societies to see possible futures. In addition, Scott traces the connections of the two societies, be they of black Louisiana volunteers serving in Cuba or Antonio Maceo visiting New Orleans. Scott's arguments rest on the impressive research that went into this work; while she always recognizes the scholarship that has gone before hers, the heart of the book relies on extensive archival probes in state and plantation records, as well as some oral history. At mid-century, Cuba and Louisiana were worlds of cane and slaves; in both societies former slaves used the same strategies to make similar demands for citizenship, resources, and respect after abolition; but Cuban blacks and whites bargained over a public commitment to racial equality, while in Louisiana, despite the efforts of people of color, white supremacy would dominate politics and public life. Scott's comparison adeptly shows how and why post-emancipation societies emerge and evolve. This work will be both an inspiration and touchstone for scholars studying life after slavery.

James E. Sanders

Utah State University