Freedom Papers Reaction

            The most obvious point Freedom Papers tries to make is the power of documents. The legal documents and various papers created, carried, and preserved by the members of this family determined everything about them: their legal rights, their status, where they could go, their citizenship/nationality, and even how they would be remembered. This family, by creating and preserving so many documents, helped create the not only a narrative around their lives, but also the archive that would support that narrative. They have voices. We actually know things about them and don’t have to rely heavily on speculation or long for a story we either don’t know or can’t know to be true. Obviously, there are things we don’t know, but as the book makes clear, there is a wealth of information available, which is in stark contrast to the story of Venus, for example.

            Perhaps the power of documents shouldn’t be surprising since fake I.D.s can be made and purchased by teenagers, and during the 18^th and 19^th centuries document forgery must have been easier than it is now, but I really never thought about just how much power they can have. My birth certificate, for instance, has been something I’ve only needed occasionally, and I’ve lost several copies. I never cared because getting a new one only takes a few dollars and a half hour at most. I lost my Social Security card once and waited two years to get a new one; it was that long before I needed it again, so it was that long before I cared about it again. That may seem irresponsible to some, but really, how often do we have to show people things like that? If you have a valid driver’s license or state-issued I.D. that’s usually enough to prove your age and/or identity, and renewing them can now be done online, so you don’t even have to prove to a live person that you are indeed who you say you are. At the same time, my legal status has never been in question or needed to be proven in nearly the same as the people in this family’s (and other families like theirs) was.

One example that stuck with me was on page 39, when it says Rosalie had become a “sans-papiers, a person with no papers to establish the legitimacy of her status. […] She was neither a slave nor free.” Michel Vincent, her partner and the father of her children, was not a planter nor was he particularly prosperous, but he had papers proving he owned property and had once been financially secure enough to own slaves, so his social status probably wasn’t as low as it would otherwise have been. Another example also involved Rosalie, who was one of the more interesting characters in my opinion. On page 44 it says Michel created a manumission paper for her, despite the fact that no evidence of his ever owning her exists and that legally, she would have been free at that point anyway. However, that freedom was not necessarily airtight, and the drafting of a manumission document might have provided Rosalie and her/their children with a more secure freedom. It’s mind-boggling to think that a law declaring her/them free wasn’t enough to make it so, and writing out a paper claiming that to be the case was necessary.

            The importance of names also stuck out to me. The practice of re-naming or un-naming slaves as a way of “rupturing” their past identity is disturbing, as is the way allowing slaves who weren’t being sold into the Atlantic slave trade to retain theirs. It’s clear why this was done, and the use of names by the characters in this book to establish new identities is fascinating. When he was trying to be an American citizen, Edouard Tinchant referred to himself was “Edward”, but when he left America, he became “Edouard” again. On the surface, they appear to be the same name with a different spelling and perhaps a slightly different pronunciation, but changing the spelling to “Edward” distanced him from his European birth and upbringing and strengthened his claim to American citizenship. That Rosalie’s daughter Elisabeth was able to gain the right to use her father’s last name, Vincent, and that it mattered deeply to her status stuck with me as I read.