Protagonists of Their Own Emancipation
The end of the slave trade and slavery in the Americas and Africa entailed a long and complex process involving several social, economic, and legal dimensions. But despite these various layers, both gradual and final abolitions of slavery were possible through the actions of enslaved men and women who challenged their legal status by petitioning courts.
Moreover, as discussed in chapter 15, legislation was shaped by the activities of bondspeople who along with other social actors took their destiny into their own hands by organizing rebellions and undertaking massive flights. These movements were also supported by campaigns including petitions, the publication of manifestos in newspapers, and the organization of public gatherings for the passing of antislavery legislation. In other words, beyond the legal prohibition of slavery, either in the Americas or in Africa, bondspeople were protagonists of their own emancipation. Still, in most regions of the Americas, former slave owners obtained financial compensation to cover the loss of their enslaved property. However, former enslaved persons never obtained financial or material reparations for slavery.52 In the period that followed the abolition of slavery in the Americas, freedpeople continued to experience economic and social exclusion.Likewise, during European colonial rule in Africa, freedpeople were submitted to inhumane forms of labor exploitation that, although not being slavery, carried many slavery-like features. In the Americas, many freedmen and freedwomen were subjected to difficult living and working conditions in the period that immediately followed the end of slavery. In the United States, following the quick period of radical Reconstruction between 1863 and 1877, segregation and open racial hatred prevailed in the final decades of the nineteenth century, preventing freedpeople and their descendants from having access to civil rights. In Brazil and the rest of Latin America, freedpeople were denied the same economic opportunities as their white counterparts during slavery and after the end of slavery. These difficult conditions, which varied among regions and periods, led many freedpeople to migrate to West Africa, where they continued to bear the stigma associated with their former lives of bondage. As we will see in chapter 17, however, once on the continent, whereas most former slaves faced frequent hardships, some of the freedmen and freedwomen who survived the ordeal of migrating to Africa became slave traders and later collaborated with European colonial regimes.