From the “Legal Culture of Slavery” to Black Legal Culture: Reimagining the Implications and Meanings of Black Litigiousness in Slavery and Freedom

Abstract

This review essay considers Alejandro de la Fuente and Ariela J. Gross’s Becoming Free, Becoming Black (2020); Laura F. Edwards’s The People and Their Peace (2009); Ariela J. Gross’s Double Character ([2000] 2006); Martha S. Jones’s Birthright Citizens (2018); Kelly M. Kennington’s In the Shadow of Dred Scott (2017); and Kimberly M. Welch’s Black Litigants in the Antebellum South (2018), arguing that one important implication of these works is that the roots of post-Reconstruction Black legal culture can be found during the antebellum period. The essay synthesizes the insights of these works regarding legal culture, legal consciousness, vernacular legal education, and legal networking. It concludes that, for students of Black legal culture and litigation for and by Black people beyond Reconstruction (that is, Jim Crow), examining the historiography of antebellum litigation for and by Black people is an important starting point in advanced discussions about Black legal culture.