UC Berkeley

This dissertation argues that in order to better understand the actions and experiences of African American women in nineteenth-century Missouri, we must not only use an intersectional lens that accounts for race and class, but also consider the ways what I call diagonality, which relates to geography and spatial factors, impacted their lives. I use the story of an obscure, formerly enslaved African American woman named Agnes Evans, in Franklin County, to argue that African American women sometimes chose not to pursue redress through legal pathways, and instead redressed their grievances informally, based on a moral authority. Drawing on newspapers, probate cases, and court records, I analyze the case of Evans, who allegedly embezzled personal property from her deceased former enslaver in 1870. I situate this dissertation within studies of the racialized and gendered nature of Black women’s archival silences and invisibility, examining the tension between moral and legal rights, and the ways intersectionality and diagonality shaped decisions around pursuits of redress.