Free men of color petitioned using revolutionary new racial and citizenship language

Evidence

A man named Laurent Jolicoeur presented a petition to the administration in Saint-Marc, introducing himself as “formerly described as a citoyen de couleur, but emphasizing the accuracy of the term by noting that he was in fact “as black as the white is white.” He was seeking freedom for one of his slaves, Zaïre, a woman of the Ibo nation, asking the administrators for “your benevolence, or rather your justice,” in taking her “out of captivity.” “Zaïre is no common subject,” Jolicoeur wrote, “and if she were not in servitude, she could rival any citoyenne with the elevation of her sentiments.” Because of this, however, her state made her deeply miserable, and, “especially since the Revolution,” she was inconsolable. She was the mother of three children “of her color,” a fact that proved not only her “wisdom” but also her “virtue.” — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 522

Categorization

• DEFINE: Shows how the term ‘citoyen de couleur’ was being contested and redefined during the revolutionary period, with Jolicoeur renaming himself simply ‘black’.
• XREF: The framing of chastity/refusal of interracial sex as proof of virtue echoes moral-panic dynamics around race and marriage in the French Caribbean that reverberate in later Atlantic-world historiography. — connects to: Free people of color allied with Paris abolitionists to radicalize citizenship demands — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 281; The revolution inverted colonial racial hierarchies in everyday petition language — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 523; The Declaration of the Rights of Man gave free-coloreds a universalist legal foundation (+2 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Free people of color allied with Paris abolitionists to radicalize citizenship demands — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 281; The revolution inverted colonial racial hierarchies in everyday petition language — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 523; The Declaration of the Rights of Man gave free-coloreds a universalist legal foundation (+2 more)