Portrait of Salustia (Salustia)

The enslaved Salustia lived in the hinterland of Paraíba when she filed a lawsuit against her master, owner of the Curral Grande sugar cane mill, in 1885. She demanded that he present to the court the “legal title by which he maintained her in a captive state.” She also asked that he provide her “letter of freedom,” as the law had determined that slaves should be declared freed if they were not registered until the end of September 1873. Salustia knew that her registry did not exist and denounced the fact that she had been kept “for more than thirteen years in the barbaric state of slavery in an unjust and illegal way.” Towards the end of the 1880s, her letter of freedom was finally issued.