My 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 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. Using wills, inventories and other sources, I investigate how revolt planning impacted the freed community in moments of insecurity, uncertainty, legal and police persecution. Through the story of Sabina da Cruz, I seek to understand how these contexts particularly affected the lives of freed women to question whether they all agreed with a radical rupture that would put an end to slavery. The denunciation of the uprising made by Sabina herself tells us that this is not the case. Therefore, I investigate why legal measures, which aimed to encourage whistleblowing, seemed much more attractive to people like Sabina da Cruz. I believe it is possible to understand her reasons from a gender perspective, as she is primarily responsible for guaranteeing her freedom and that of the people who were part of her network in a slave-owning and patriarchal society.
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.
