Juliana

The enslaved Juliana was an enterprising woman who planned to buy hers and her family members’ freedom. Living on the nineteenth-century slave coast of Paraíba, she strived, together with her mother Luísa and her sisters, to show that they were their own mistresses, free women with their children. In 1855, Juliana bought her manumission for one conto de réis, the currency of the time. Some of her children had been born before and baptized as enslaved, while others would be born already free. Her mother was not freed until 1861, when she was about fifty years old. Over the years, Juliana was able to accumulate resources to free all her relatives who were still enslaved. In her life story, freedom was a collective and family strategy.