Social Mobility and Violence
Most enslaved people lived and worked in plantation areas in the Americas. Despite this concentration, many bondspeople labored in urban zones of the Americas, where they certainly experienced greater freedom of movement.
Cities were sites where they could re-create previously broken connections with other men and women of African descent and develop new networks. Working in the streets or in domestic spaces of inland and coastal cities provided bondspeople with opportunities to own and exchange things, including tools and clothes. Toiling in urban areas allowed enslaved men and women to earn wages and gradually accumulate resources to purchase their own freedom. But despite all these opportunities, the cities continued to be spaces of social control. Public authorities and white residents continually watched the steps of enslaved people. In cities with large enslaved, freed, and freeborn Black populations such as Salvador, Rio de Janeiro, and Charleston, bondspeople often lived under imposed movement restrictions. Yet, as we will see in chapter 9 and subsequent chapters, enslaved people, especially enslaved women, persisted in seeking multiple ways of circumventing such obstacles and carving out a better life for themselves and their descendants.