The Sword in Her Hands: The Legal Maneuvering of Antebellum Louisiana’s Free Women of Color

In her paper “The Sword in Her Hands: The Legal Maneuvering of Antebellum Louisiana’s Free Women of Color,” Dr. Noël M. Voltz explores free women of colors’ long and extensive use of the antebellum Louisiana court system as a space to pursue and defend their tenuous freedom.  More specifically, this paper will examine the lives of several free women of color who chose to engage in sex across the color line and ultimately bring their sexual relationships with white men into the Louisiana courtrooms.  Although free women of color occupied a precarious position in antebellum Louisiana, often subjugated because of their race, gender and class, these women used their very position as a space to maneuver socially and economically. Utilizing Louisiana Supreme Court records and other legal documents, this paper will show that free women of color, although constrained by the intersection of their race class and gender, actively challenged the legal restrictions that bound them strategically using the court system to lay claim to what they saw as rightfully theirs. Ultimately, Voltz finds that through legal negotiations, some free women of color were able to capitalize upon their unique caste position and their sexual relationship with white men and use the legal system to successfully carve out a space for themselves and move within antebellum Louisiana society.