Sabina da Cruz: Life and Strategies of a Freed African in Slave-Holding Bahia

The research focuses on the story of Sabina da Cruz, a freed African woman who denounced the Malês Revolt, an insurrection by Muslim Africans, which occurred in Bahia, Brazil, in January 1835. This character's trajectory allows us to reflect on sociability, agency, and legal restrictions imposed on freed African women, as well as the strategies they deployed to remain free and autonomous in slave-holding Bahia. 

Bio:

Luciana Brito is a professor of History at the Federal University of Recôncavo da Bahia (Cachoeira-Bahia-Brazil).  She holds a PhD in history from the University of São Paulo, she was a Fulbright fellow at New York University (2011-2012) and an Andrew Mellon Foundation fellow at the City University of New York (2015-2016).  She is currently a fellow at the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPQ-Brazil). Her research interests include slavery and freedom in Brazil and the United States, investigating how notions of race, freedom, and captivity impacted the lives of African and African-American populations. She is the author of two books, livros “O avesso da Raça: escravidão, racismo e abolicionismo entre o Brasil e os EUA" (2023) e "Temores da África: Segurança, Legislação e População Africana na Bahia Oitocentista", which was awarded the 2016 Thomas Skidmore Prize.  In addition to academic work, she is a columnist and is the author of several articles on race, gender, culture, and inequality in the contemporary Black diaspora.