Other Post-emancipation Itineraries

This chapter analyzes the trajectories of the ex-slaves and their descendants who left the plantations and migrated to other parts of the Recôncavo, especially Salvador, after abolition. The idea is to understand and analyze the migratory choices that ex-slaves made and the ways in which they entered the urban milieu. The chapter demonstrates that many of their migratory choices were related to their plans for freedom. The changes that took place in the personal and family trajectories, above all by adopting new surnames, developing new habits, and learning new professions, can illuminate important aspects of the choices and paths they chose. This chapter makes use of various types of sources, but especially registers of domestic servants and urban workers, economic sectors that employed a large number of the men and women who had lived through slavery.