The Capital of Free Women

Danielle Terrazas Williams will discuss her new book. The Capital of Free Women interrogates a gendered history of freedom, illuminates how Black women navigated secular and religious expectations, and highlights the value of writing the history of people. Interrogating notarial archives, as well as royal edicts and ecclesiastical sources, the book surveys cases of Black women across the economic spectrum and challenges notions of race and class seventeenth-century Mexico. Free Black women in central Veracruz, sometimes just one generation removed from slavery, purchased land, ran businesses, served as influential matriarchs, managed intergenerational wealth, and even owned slaves of African descent. By examining a transitional space of freedom and enslavement, The Capital of Free Women contributes to important conversations about women’s agency, under documented phenomena of slavery, and the struggle for dignity. 

Danielle Terrazas Williams is Associate Professor in the School of History at the University of Leeds. Her work has appeared in Slavery and Abolition, The Americas, Journal of Women’s History, and History of Religions. She has held research fellowships at Princeton University and the University of Notre Dame. Her first book, The Capital of Free Women: Race, Legitimacy, and Liberty in Colonial Mexico, published by Yale University Press, challenges traditional narratives of racial hierarchies and gendered mobility. Danielle’s current book project analyzes the strategies employed by Jesuits as they began to engage with free and enslaved African people in New Spain.   

Details on how to join this session will be sent to all registered attendees 24 hours in advance.  Booking will therefore close the day before the scheduled date.