Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

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Category: Slavery

  • Race and Multiraciality in Brazil and the United States: Converging Paths?

    Although both Brazil and the United States inherited European norms that accorded whites privileged status relative to all other racial groups, the development of their societies followed different trajectories in defining white/black relations. In Brazil pervasive miscegenation and the lack of formal legal barriers to racial equality gave the appearance of its being a “racial…

  • The Slave Trader, the White Slave, and the Politics of Racial Determination in the 1850s

    The Slave Trader, the White Slave, and the Politics of Racial Determination in the 1850s Journal of American History Volume 87, Issue 1 (June 2000) pages 43-56 DOI: 10.2307/2567914 Walter Johnson, Winthrop Professor of History and Professor of African and African American Studies Harvard University In January of 1857 Jane Morrison was sold in the…

  • “Quadroon” Balls in the Spanish Period

    “Quadroon” Balls in the Spanish Period Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association Volume 14, Number 3 (Summer, 1973) pages 310-315 Translated and Edited by Ronald R. Morazan, Assistant Professor of History Southern University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana With the influx of free blacks into Spanish Louisiana from the island of Santo Domingo, the…

  • Creole Angel: The Self-Identity of the Free People of Color of Antebellum New Orleans

    Creole Angel: The Self-Identity of the Free People of Color of Antebellum New Orleans University of North Texas August 2006 136 pages Ben Melvin Hobratsch Thesis Prepared for the Degree of Masters of Arts, University of North Texas, August 2006 This thesis is about the self-identity of antebellum New Orleans’s free people of color. The…

  • PBS series explores black culture in Latin America

    PBS series explores black culture in Latin America 2011-04-18 Jennifer Kay Associated Press MIAMI—On a street in a seaside city in Brazil, four men describe themselves to Henry Louis Gates Jr. as black. Flabbergasted, the Harvard scholar insists they compare their skin tones with his. In a jumble, their forearms form a mocha spectrum. Oh,…

  • Brazil’s census offers recognition at last to descendants of runaway slaves

    Brazil’s census offers recognition at last to descendants of runaway slaves The Guardian 2010-08-25 Tom Phillip Interviewers plan to reach 190m people, including the long-ignored Kalunga, by motorbike, plane, canoe and donkey When Jorge Moreira de Oliveira’s great-great-great-great-great-grandfather arrived in Brazil in the 18th century he was counted off the slave-ship, branded and dispatched to…

  • Problems with Plaçage: Historical Imagination and Femmes de couleurs libres in Colonial and Antebellum New Orleans

    Problems with Plaçage: Historical Imagination and Femmes de couleurs libres in Colonial and Antebellum New Orleans Bridges: A Journal of Student Research Coastal Carolina University Issue 3 (Winter 2009) Philip Whalen, Associate Professor of History Coastal Carolina University This essay compares two approaches to understanding the condition of free women of color who struggled to…

  • The Mysterious Portraitist Joshua Johnson

    The Mysterious Portraitist Joshua Johnson Archives of American Art Journal Volume 36, Number 2 (1996) pages 2-7 Jennifer Bryan Robert Torchia The Maryland Historical Society’s Department of Manuscripts recently received three volumes of Baltimore County court chattel records—registers of personal property transactions such as mortgages, deeds of gift, powers of attorney, bills of sale, and…

  • Blacks in Mexico: A Forgotten Minority

    Blacks in Mexico: A Forgotten Minority Time Magazine 2009-09-15 Alexis Okeowo The first town of freed African slaves in the Americas is not exactly where you would expect to find it—and it isn’t exactly what you’d expect to find either. First, it’s not in the United States. Yanga, on Mexico’s Gulf Coast, is a sleepy…

  • Base Wretches and Black Wenches: A Story of Sex and Race, Violence and Compassion, During Slavery

    Base Wretches and Black Wenches: A Story of Sex and Race, Violence and Compassion, During Slavery Alabama Law Review Volume 59 (2008) pages 1501-1555 Jason A. Gillmer, Associate Professor of Law Texas Wesleyan School of Law This Article examines in detail the local and trial records of a nineteenth-century Texas case to tell the story…