Kimberly Welch's Black Litigants in the Antebellum American South is a careful examination of the ways in which people of color in the Natchez district of Louisiana and Mississippi “participated in and shaped legal processes in their communities” (8). Welch's study of the lower courts of several parishes and counties along the Mississippi River between 1800 and 1860 is one “of claims-making and the language used to that end: the language of property” (13). “Through this language,” she contends, “[black litigants] were able to make whites accountable to their promises and rhetoric, navigate the world in which they lived, and exploit the inconsistencies in southern racial and economic ideologies” (13). Put simply, African Americans co-opted the language of the law in order to advocate for themselves, with a surprising degree of success.

Divided into two parts, Welch first examines “how black people succeeded in court” (22). In chapter 1, Welch makes clear the omnipresence of the law in the nineteenth-century South and the ways in which African-descended people would have been exposed to “legal processes” (31) on a regular basis. She then considers “the rhetoric of reputation” (ch. 2) and “advocacy” (ch. 3). Welch's discussion of advocacy lays bare the ways in which people for whom the courts were not designed advocated for themselves and utilized the networks around them—family, the larger black community, next friends (both black and white), white lawyers—to aid them in their claims making. Most surprising here was the role that white lawyers played. Many of these lawyers, Welch claims, were concerned with making money and wholly uninterested in speaking out against slavery, the institution from which they accrued their wealth.

The presence of white lawyers—who were often also slaveholders—might suggest that they were “at the center of black people's engagement with [the] law” (19). However, Welch successfully illustrates that, instead, “black clients compelled their lawyers to work for them in ways that reflected their interests … and their claims to personhood, property, family, and freedom” (98). Welch's assertion complicates not only our understanding of both how and when slaveholders worked to consolidate their power but also the ways in which African-descended people created space for themselves in the antebellum South with the help of some of those same, often self-interested, slaveholders.

The second section of the book explores “the kinds of things that [black litigants] went to court to fight over and the scope and significance of their litigiousness” (22). The lawsuits included debt actions, property ownership disputes, freedom suits, and cases about the formation and protection of family. In her chapter on freedom suits, Welch emphasizes “that it was not just wealthy or property-owning free people of color who had the wherewithal, confidence, networks, or knowledge to sue” in the local courts (163). “Enslaved people also initiated lawsuits in southern courts” and “us[ed] the same language and strategies deployed by free black people” (163). Of the 128 cases Welch analyzes, 61 were decided in favor of the enslaved and 20 were decided in favor of the defendant. Moreover, forty-seven of the lawsuits were either dismissed or no outcome was recorded (162).

It cannot be ignored that Welch's demonstration of the successes of black litigants existed within the larger realities of white supremacy, racism, and slavery. Welch does not deny this or try to gloss over this. The ability of black litigants to navigate what were very narrow channels of access/advocacy did not mean that white supremacy was not a real force in the Natchez district. She does not discuss the possibility (and I wonder if perhaps she should have) that by arguing in terms of property, these litigants inadvertently reinforced the structures of oppression for others who were unable to create spaces for themselves either within the institution of slavery or as free people of color.

In a fascinating appendix, Welch walks readers through her research process, which included a lot of time sifting through records in the basements of courthouses—and in sheds—in Louisiana and Mississippi, as well as the drying out and cleaning, relabeling, filing, and organizing of documents: files that, for years, had been forgotten. This is no small feat, and the fact that Welch was able to uncover the cases of more than 1,000 black litigants through her labors is to be commended. Moreover, readers must take seriously Welch's implicit plea for the preservation and recovery of documents from other basements and storage facilities and the imperative that we should feel as scholars to do anything we can to aid in this process.

Throughout Black Litigants, Welch writes with clarity and purpose. Her thick descriptions and her narrative style will undoubtedly appeal to specialists and nonspecialists alike. Welch's examination of black litigiousness in the lower courts of the antebellum South will, it is hoped, spur others into the basements of county courthouses to uncover other voices and circumstances that complicate our understanding of white hegemony and the so-called power of the Southern courtroom. This is a book that has implications not only for how we understand the nineteenth-century Natchez district, but also for how we read and understand court sources—and defendants, plaintiffs, and witnesses—in different courtrooms across both time and space.