PhD defence
Contested Mobility: Free African Americans and the Law in the U.S. South, 1790-1830s
- C.M.M. Mertens
- Date
- Thursday 19 February 2026
- Time
- Address
-
Academy Building
Rapenburg 73
2311 GJ Leiden
Supervisor(s)
Summary
This dissertation examines how laws regulating mobility shaped the experiences of freedom for free African Americans in the U.S. slave South. Drawing from source materials such as court records, petitions, and travel passes it demonstrates these ‘mobility laws’ made freedom increasingly precarious and subject to constant negotiation. Exposed to the risk of being deemed “illegal” by living in violation of the law or moving without official papers, free African Americans were vulnerable to arrest, imprisonment, forced labor, and separation from their families, much like undocumented migrants today.
Covering the period from the 1790s to the 1830s, this study reveals how the threat of exposure, social and economic standing, and personal connections largely determined who could find protection through legal strategies such as petitioning and turn the law into an instrument of empowerment, and who instead had to evade it through other means or who felt pressured to leave the state.
PhD dissertations
Approximately one week after the defence, PhD dissertations by Leiden PhD students are available digitally through the Leiden Repository, that offers free access to these PhD dissertations. Please note that in some cases a dissertation may be under embargo temporarily and access to its full-text version will only be granted later.
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