#freedom papers

[californiastatelibrary]

New Digitized Collection Alert!

Thomas Gilman was an enslaved man brought to California during the Gold Rush to mine for his enslaver. He was able to save enough to buy his freedom for $1,000 (about $38,000 today) after working for 2-3 years. As a free man, he went on to buy property in Shaw's Flat and lived there until he passed away in 1911. In addition to his freedom papers, the collection also has several poll tax receipts he paid, receipts for various other taxes and services, an account book, and a subpoena. 

The images in this post include a photo of Gilman next to his cabin, his real estate tax postcard from 1906-1907, and his water bill from 1907. 

To view the collection, click here: https://csl.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/fulldisplay?docid=alma990005611960205115&context=L&vid=01CSL_INST:CSL&lang=en&search_scope=MyInst_and_CI&adaptor=Local%20Search%20Engine&tab=Everything&query=any,contains,thomas%20gilman&offset=0

[philomaela]

Did you know that ribbons used in a cotillion can bind couples together? If ours will match in color, let it be your way.

[dangermousie]

That ask reminded me about my obsession with Вольная Грамота aka Freedom Papers which Amazon (which has now got it with English subs) somehow inaccurately translated as Life of a Mistress which I genuinely have no idea how it relates to the story whatsoever.

What is it about? Well, it’s a much shorter, higher quality Bednaya Nastya if Vladimir didn’t take eight billion eps to snap out of it.

Our heroine, Polina, is a serf but an educated cultured one whose owner treats her as a daughter but nonetheless delays freeing her until he’s on his deathbed when things go awry. And now he is dead and Polina is a thing to be bought and sold and after the whole property, serfs included, is acquired by a neighborhood помесчик, her life is hell - she is not used to serfdom and her introduction is brutal and swift. The owner’s wife is both religious and soulless, the owner wants to sleep with Polina on general principles of he owns her so why not, and she goes from reading and using her mind to being treated as a thing.

Into that comes Dimitry, the owner’s younger brother who has just come from the war a hero and, clearly, must be some sort of a changeling because he is the only person with a soul in that whole monster family. They fall in love and much angst ensues because his brother’s twin idols are class distinction and control and so...

Spoiler - it’s a modern Russian show so the ending is happy. If it was made thirty years ago or was, eg a Chinese drama with the same set-up, a pair of protagonists this lovely would have totally ended up weltering in their own blood by the end.

[philomaela]

Heavenly sky! Wide and high!

[iwriteaboutfeminism]

Baltimore’s curfew is calling upon a racist past of sundown towns and freedom papers

Freedom Papers: A Short History

Freedom papers, or free papers, were documents owned by free black people during the time of slavery. They included a detailed description of the person and were, at least in theory, meant  to prevent runaway slave patrols (early police forces) from arresting free black people and selling them into slavery. 

[ageofrevolutions]

"Michigan Law Professor Rebecca J. Scott talks about Freedom Papers: An Atlantic Odyssey in the Age of Emancipation, a new book she co-authored with Jean M. Hébrard that traces the story of a remarkable family from 18th Century Africa to the present." 

[vidacommunity-blog]

And I am searching for a new place to live, one I can afford in this city where neighborhoods get investments of public capital as they are taken over by influxes of those with more capital worth; I am searching for any home I can land in this land where I have struggled for more than half my life to scrape together a living and secure a place that I do not have to leave at the command of those who hold the papers on it.

Freedom Papers | Racquel Goodison | HER KIND