Liberata was born in Brazil around 1780. From a very young age, she was subjected to harassment by her alleged master. Vieira sexually assaulted her and promised to grant her freedom; even after she bore two children, he never fulfilled that promise.

Years later, Liberata became involved with another man, also named José, who offered her marriage and the purchase of her freedom. Vieira permitted neither. It was then that Liberata resolved to initiate a legal action to assert her manumission.

Vieira ultimately promised Liberata her freedom if she abandoned her legal struggle. In 1814, after securing her liberty, Liberata married and had two more children, José and Joaquina. Unable to raise them herself, she entrusted the children to Major Antonio Luís de Andrade, who was to care for them and teach José the trade of tailoring. Yet their fate took another turn: upon the major’s death, his widow attempted to sell them as enslaved people. Following their mother’s example, José and Joaquina turned to the courts, asserting that they were free from birth. In 1835, both successfully obtained their manumission.

In 1836, Catarina Maria had been living as a free woman for over eleven years. She resided on Rua do Príncipe do Valongo, in Rio de Janeiro, together with Antonio de Carvalho, also a freedman. Three years before the initiation of the legal proceedings, Antonio and Catarina were victims of a robbery, during which the thieves stole two boxes containing clothing, jewelry, shoes, and two letters of manumission.

Upon learning that Catarina Maria’s letter of manumission had been stolen, Marcelino Guedes de Amorim, brother of her deceased master, accused her of being a runaway slave. He had her arrested, paid her bail, and attempted to sell her.

Catarina then sought justice, obtaining a warrant to be taken to a public warehouse, from which she initiated legal proceedings. She substantiated her case in multiple ways: attaching a copy of her master’s will, presenting witnesses, and submitting a statement from the police chief confirming the theft of the letters of manumission.

Nevertheless, the judge declared the case null because there had been no agreement between Catarina Maria, a freed African woman, and Marcelino Guedes de Amorim, who sought to enslave her. Two years later, the Court of Appeals upheld the original ruling. Catarina’s fate remains unknown.

In 1839, Catarina, a mulatto woman living in the province of Espírito Santo, was granted freedom by her master and received a letter of manumission, with the condition that she temporarily continue to serve them. Once freed, she worked and lived independently, having two daughters, Eduvirges and Anna.

Upon the death of Catarina’s former masters in 1843, Eduvirges and Anna were listed as slaves in the estate inventory. At this point, with their mother’s support, they initiated legal proceedings to claim their freedom. The defendants reacted swiftly: as the matter became widely known, they reportedly beat the girls “atrociously” and even threatened to sell them.

Nevertheless, the evidence and arguments presented by the daughters were irrefutable. One of the alleged masters recognized Eduvirges’ right to freedom, and she was immediately emancipated. Anna’s case continued, as the defendants claimed that Catarina had only gained her freedom after her masters’ deaths, and thus Anna had been born a slave. The judge, however, ruled otherwise, granting Anna her freedom. The defendants appealed, and the Court of Appeals upheld the decision, confirming that Anna was free, as she had been born of a free mother.

In March 1871, Cristina, an African woman, filed this freedom suit against Maria Rita de São José. She claimed to be a “free African,” a term used at the time for Africans who arrived in Brazil after the ban on the slave trade, in 1831, having been seized by authorities and assigned to work in public and private establishments for a period. Despite being officially free, many of these “free Africans” remained enslaved throughout their lives.

When the slave ship transporting her attempted to dock in Macaé, Cristina was about eight years old. From there, she says she was taken to Rio de Janeiro and sent to work in a family household, first in Cherém, in the parish of Pilar. Years later, she lived in Rio de Janeiro, working as a produce vendor and paying a fixed amount to her supposed mistress.

Cristina argued that she had arrived in Brazil after the trafficking of enslaved Africans was prohibited, and that she should be recognized as free. She also emphasized that she had never been officially recorded as a slave in any document of her supposed mistress, and that her sister, Eliziana, was in the same situation.

Although witnesses corroborated her account, the judge ruled that there was insufficient evidence to establish that Cristina was a “free African.” The Court of Appeals upheld this ruling in 1875. Upon learning the outcome, Cristina told the police that she would not return home, nor would she share the same fate as Eliziana, who was ultimately sold. She then fled.

Bonifacia was twenty years old in 1872 when she filed a lawsuit for freedom against Maria da Hora. She stated that her alleged mistress had forced her into prostitution, along with Joana, Paulina, Maria, Felismina, Florisbela, and another woman named Bonifacia.

They were compelled to perform “unseemly and illicit acts” both in their mistress’s residence and in another property she owned, located at the rear of a warehouse.

Bonifacia contended that she had “generated significant profits for her mistress during the time she was in her house, together with her, in prostitution,” and that for this reason she should be granted her freedom, along with her “companions in this dissolute life.” Despite witnesses corroborating that Bonifacia had been forced into prostitution, Maria da Hora denied the claims, asserting that Bonifacia had been employed in domestic service.

The judge did not dispute Bonifacia’s account. Emphasizing that “forced prostitution is not a legal ground for granting freedom,” he ruled that Bonifacia should remain in the possession of Maria da Hora. Several months later, the Court of Appeals upheld this decision. Consequently, Bonifacia remained enslaved and continued to be subjected to forced prostitution.

In November 1874, the Black woman Marcolina, suffering from severe pulmonary tuberculosis, requested an appraisal of her value to pay for her freedom to her mistress, Mariana da Cunha Vasconcelos de Araujo Viana.

At the time, she deposited everything she had: 100,000 réis, given to her by her mother, the free African woman Sabina.

Several months passed before the three experts assigned a value to Marcolina. Meanwhile, her mistress complained that she had received only a “meager sum” up to that point, and that Marcolina should return to her service, since she “cannot be deprived of her services without a plausible reason.”

The experts disagreed regarding Marcolina’s condition. The first, considering the severity of her illness, valued her at 200,000 réis. The other two, at 400,000 réis. And this is what the court ruled: that Marcolina would have five days, starting from the decision, to pay the remainder of her value. The Court of Appeals upheld the judge’s decision.

Marcolina did not have 300,000 réis to pay for her freedom. She, who only wished to die a free woman, was “forced to remain in the state of slavery in which she found herself.”

The “preta crioula (black Brazilian)” Eva was twenty-five years old when she initiated a legal action for freedom against Tereza Roza de Oliveira Passos, widow of her former master, Manoel José d’Oliveira Passos. According to Eva, Manoel had publicly declared that his slaves would be freed upon his death. However, when he died intestate, his widow refused to deliver the letters of manumission to Eva and her three-year-old daughter, Maria.

Eva had been purchased by Manoel in 1865, along with her mother, Isabel, from Angola, who was thirty-eight years old at the time. Both were known for their skills in washing, ironing, and cooking. As was common in that period, Eva was leased to other households, with her alleged mistress collecting the rental fees.

In 1875, the judge in the case ruled that Eva and Maria were entitled to their freedom .

Tereza contested the decision, appealing to the Court of Appeals. However, on May 12, 1876, she sent her nephew to the court to withdraw the appeal, stating that she “recognized the rights to freedom of the aforementioned Black women.”

Adriana, a farm worker, was approximately 38 years old when she filed a legal action for freedom against her alleged master, João Batista Duarte e Castro.

She claimed to have been abandoned in April 1880, prohibited by João Batista from entering his house, even to visit her two young children, one of whom was João Batista’s grandson. At that time, having paid 400,000 réis for her freedom, Adriana received a receipt along with the promise that her letter of liberty would be delivered the following day at the notary’s office.

As Adriana was ill at the time and had to “seek shelter for treatment,” she was unable to retrieve her letter of freedom. Upon recovering, she discovered that João Batista had not fulfilled his promise. Moreover, according to her testimony, when she asked someone else to collect the letter, he took the receipt and never returned it. In May 1882, she was confronted by an individual named Gomes, who claimed to be João Batista’s attorney and demanded an additional 300,000 réis in exchange for delivering her letter of manumission. Adriana refused and continued her efforts to obtain the document to which she was entitled. She then reported João Batista’s attorney, and instead of receiving her letter of freedom, was imprisoned in the city’s Detention House.

At the detention center, Adriana was assigned a guardian, who petitioned for her release “for the simple fact of having had the audacity to plead for her freedom.” He succeeded, and she was released in January 1883. The case then proceeded, with witnesses examined and arguments presented by both parties.

João Batista claimed that Adriana had never been abandoned and that she had been seduced into fleeing. The judge ruled that Adriana’s allegations were insufficient to grant her freedom, deciding that she should be returned to João Batista and that she retained the right, if she wished, to file another suit to seek arbitration of her value. Adriana appealed the ruling, but to no avail: on October 16, 1883, the Court of Appeals upheld the decision, and Adriana remained enslaved.

Hermínia was in her early twenties when she filed a lawsuit against João da Costa Ferreira, seeking wages for the period during which he had rented her out to others for domestic labor. According to her testimony in the case, she was born free but had been enslaved as a child, kidnapped in Maranhão, and brought to Rio de Janeiro to be sold.

Purchased by the Portuguese trader Ferreira, Hermínia was held in illegal captivity from 1880 to 1886, when she fled with her young daughter and secured assistance to draft a petition initiating a lawsuit for her freedom.

Workers sympathetic to the abolitionist cause likely assisted her in escaping, finding shelter, and initiating the legal proceedings. After obtaining a favorable ruling for her freedom in 1886, she reopened the case two years later to seek compensation for the labor she had performed while being rented out, during which Ferreira received the full wages paid by her employers.

Several workers, including Portuguese laborers, testified on Hermínia’s behalf. The merchant, however, claimed that he had purchased her “in good faith,” a defense widely invoked by slaveholders at the time. The trial judge ruled that, despite her having obtained freedom in a prior lawsuit, Hermínia and her attorney had not provided sufficient evidence that she had been born free. The case was only concluded after the abolition of slavery in 1890, when judges of the Court of Appeals of Rio de Janeiro denied Hermínia the right to compensation for her labor.

Claudina was Brazilian, single, nineteen years old, and employed in domestic service. In May 1880, at the age of twelve, she was purchased and transported from Pernambuco to Rio de Janeiro, where she lived in the townhouse at 8 Rua da Assembleia. By 1887, her monetary valuation was recorded at 675,000 réis.

On January 24, 1888, Claudina filed a lawsuit against her alleged masters seeking her freedom. She argued that there was no evidence to establish her status as a slave, “since the source or origin of her slavery was unknown,” as her records indicated her parentage was unknown.

At that time, with the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans already prohibited, an individual could only be legally recognized as a slave if born to an enslaved mother. “Birth is the only source of slavery,” the lawyers stated, yet Claudina’s alleged masters were unable to provide proof of her parentage.

The judge ruled that, in the absence of legal proof of her birth, Claudina was entitled to her freedom. In March 1888, her alleged masters, unwilling to accept the ruling, appealed the decision, and the case was brought before the Court of Appeals of Rio de Janeiro. However, it was never heard by the Court. On June 5, 1888, the rapporteur noted: “Since slavery was abolished on May 13, there is nothing further to decide.”