Degrees of Freedom

Louisiana and Cuba After Slavery

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by Rebecca J. Scott

Harvard University Press

Due/Published October 2005, 29549 pages, cloth

ISBN 0674019326

As Louisiana and Cuba emerged from slavery in the late nineteenth century, each faced the question of what rights former slaves could claim. "Degrees of Freedom compares and contrasts these two societies in which slavery was destroyed by war, and citizenship was redefined through social and political upheaval. Both Louisiana and Cuba were rich in sugar plantations that depended on an enslaved labor force. But by the beginning of the twentieth century, they diverged sharply in the meanings attributed to race and color in public life and in the boundaries placed on citizenship.