Beyond “12 Years a Slave”: the story of Luís Gama

</p> <p>He was the son of Luíza Mahin, a former slave credited with mentoring several slave insurgencies, and a ruined Portuguese bourgeois. His mother&#8217;s role in a secessionist movement to separate Bahia from the rest of the country in 1837 forced her to flee Salvador—leaving the young Luís with his father.</p> <p>If in &#8220;12 Years a Slave&#8221; Mr. Northup was sold as a slave by two conmen, Luís Gama was sold to a slave trafficker by his own father—who desperately needed money to pay for his gambling addiction.</p> <p>At that time, slaves from Bahia were considered to be &#8220;damaged goods,&#8221; due to the numerous uprisings from their enslaved populations. Many slave owners feared that their &#8220;revolutionary spirit&#8221; would &#8220;contaminate&#8221; their other servants. Receiving no bids, Mr. Gama grew into his teens as the property of the trafficker who bought him from his father, and ended working in a São Paulo inn.</p> <p>He would learn how to read and write with a guest, and, aged 17, he managed to prove in a court of law that he was born a free man—and therefore couldn&#8217;t be enslaved. He tried to join the prestigious law school at the University of São Paulo—but was rejected because of the color of his skin. Still, Mr. Gama would frequent the school&#8217;s library, becoming a self-taught <em>&#8220;rábula</em>,<em>&#8220;</em> that is, a lawyer without a bar certification—which, at that time, was not required to practice law.</p> <h2>The lawyer of the slaves</h2> <p>His stellar legal career was marked by his unyielding defense of the rights of slaves. Using the legal system, <a href="http://agenciabrasil.ebc.com.br/geral/noticia/2015-10/abolicionista-negro-que-libertou-mais-de-500-escravos-sera-reconhecido-pela">Mr. Gama freed over 500 slaves</a>, with some estimates having the count at close to 1,000. Published in 1938 by the sociologist and journalist Sud Menucci, one of his most detailed biographies describes Mr. Gama&#8217;s work as a meticulous quest for technicalities that he could use in courts to break his clients&#8217; bonds of slavery.</p> <p>This work was usually <em>pro bono</em>, as he explained in an 1869 interview to the now-defunct newspaper <em>Correio Paulistano.</em> &#8220;I advocate for free out of sincere dedication to the cause of the disgraced. I&#8217;m not in this for profit. Nor do I fear retaliation,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>He gained notoriety for defending a belief—at the time considered radical—that a slave who kills their master is, in fact, acting in self-defense.</p> <p>When he died, in 1882, six years before <a href="https://brazilian.report/guide-to-brazil/2017/10/15/slavery-brazil/">slavery was abolished in Brazil</a>, an estimated <a href="http://www.institutoluizgama.org.br/l/index.php/luiz-gama">3,000 people attended his funeral</a> at a time when São Paulo was a city of just 40,000 people. It would take 133 years for him to be posthumously recognized as a lawyer by the Brazilian Bar Association, and only last year was Mr. Gama&#8217;s name included in Brazil&#8217;s &#8220;Book of National Heroes.&#8221;</p> <p>For former Justice Minister Miguel Reale Jr., Mr. Gama was &#8220;the most important Afro-Brazilian man of the 19th century,&#8221; and that his legal pieces can be read &#8220;to build courage in the fight against all the injustices that still plague us.&#8221;