ABSTRACT
This paper addresses the challenges of freed women pursuing their children’s emancipation over the last decades of Brazilian slavery, a topic that requires closer attention from historiography. Based on the analysis of judicial documents produced in the city of São Paulo, mostly during the 1880s, it intends to investigate family emancipation projects headed by mothers of enslaved children, highlighting social practices of negotiation and resistance. At the same time, it considers the many obstacles encountered by these women on the way of their families to freedom. Thus, the paper aims to consider motherhood as a defining experience that sets specific challenges to women coming out of slavery and their children.
Keywords:
motherhood; slavery; freed women; emancipation; labor