Freedoms Given, Freedoms Won: Afro-Brazilians in Post-Abolition São Paulo and Salvador

Kim D. Butler’s monograph, Freedoms Given, Freedoms Won, has much to offer scholars of both Brazilian history and the African diasporan experience in the New World. In examining the post-Abolition period from 1888 to 1938 in the cities of São Paulo and Salvador, Butler presents an analysis of the distinct strategies and options deployed by Afro-Brazilians who faced the challenge of shaping their transition to freedom in unique ways. The author deftly connects the widely varying collective activities of Afro-Brazilians in these two cities by viewing them within a theoretical framework of responses to postslavery conditions. By defining this framework as a continuum of integrationist, alternative integrationist, or separatist responses, Butler is able to view both the emergence of the political activism of the Frente Negra Brasileira in São Paulo as well as the struggle for religious freedom for candomblés in Salvador as manifestations of distinct but linked struggles...