At the recent meeting of the
Society for Historians of the Early American Republic (SHEAR), the Society awarded the
James Broussard First Book Prize to
former guest blogger Kimberly Welch (Vanderbilt) for
Black Litigants in the Antebellum American South (University of North Carolina Press, 2018). Via
The Panorama, here's more:
. . . The prize committee, including Gregory Nobles (Chair), Ronald
Johnson, and Cynthia Kierner, found that Welch’s diligence and
intelligence are both very much on display in this exceptionally fine
book. It takes us into new and largely unwritten territory, showing
people of color, both enslaved and free, finding loopholes in an
otherwise oppressive system and using the local courts very effectively
to their advantage. As other scholars rightly expand our knowledge of
the horrors and inhumanity of slavery, Welch underscores the
necessity—by all people, particularly the oppressed—to understand and
appreciate the law. We may all be aware of the unfairness and biases of
the law as written by the privileged and powerful, but this book affirms
in a very real and unpretentious way the importance of the American
legal system as an important tool, albeit an imperfect one, for change
and protection in our society. In that regard alone, this book will
certainly have a significant impact in the historiography of slavery and
freedom.
In addition to being well-grounded in theory and historiography,
Welch’s book is clearly written and delightful to read. It is especially
good at explaining the legal details about how courts and lawyers
worked, but also uses engaging and revealing personal stories to address
much broader issues, particularly the changing foundation of rights
from property to race. Welch’s keen ability to show human faces in
litigious processes makes this book a model for writing legal history.
Finally, one of the best stories Welch tells is about her own
research for this project, an industrious and dogged search for sources.
At a time when we so often turn to digitized material on our computers,
Welch got her hands dirty digging up, sometimes literally, court
records that had remained unused since the antebellum era, finding them
and then rescuing them from decay, dirt, and mouse droppings.
Congratulations to Professor Welch!
