Latin American History Commons^™

Binding Freedom: Cuba's Black Public Sphere, 1868-1912, Alexander Sotelo Eastman

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My dissertation studies the cultural, social, and political associations linked to the civil rights movement in Cuba during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which witnessed the abolition of slavery, the crumbling of colonialism and the entrance of black intellectuals into formal politics. I trace the emergence of a black public sphere and analyze the networks of communication among people of color in Cuba and the wider Black Atlantic through sources that include antislavery narratives, the black press, court cases and secret police records. I argue that people of color in Cuba, enslaved and freed alike, engaged in political …