A Country of Their Own: African Americans and the Promise of Antebellum Latin America (1820-1870)

FAIN: FEL-281435-22

Yesenia Barragan
Rutgers University (New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8559)

Research and writing leading to a book on Latin America as a beacon of freedom and an immigration destination for African Americans during the antebellum period. 

A Country of Their Own explores the place and promise of Latin America in the political imagination of African Americans during the antebellum era. As slavery and anti-Black politics of the antebellum United States were increasingly consolidated, by the 1820s the newly independent republics of Latin America adopted abolitionist policies while officially eliminating racial caste systems. Utilizing an array of sources including newspapers, travelogues, and government correspondence among other records across several countries, my project recasts Latin American and African American History by charting African American perspectives on Latin America in addition to the antebellum migration of fugitive and free African Americans to the region in search of racial and social freedom. A Country of Our Own will be the first book to weave together a hemispheric exploration of antebellum African American and Latin American histories through the lens of emigration histories and political visioning.