Free Black Society in Colonial New Orleans
             The role of slaves in the Old South was always marked as one of servitude towards the master. Lives were spent with a master, with generation after generation of blacks serving their white masters. Some were fortunate enough to gain freedom, yet most never tasted that luxury. However, during Louisiana's Spanish colonial period, there was a huge growth in the development of free blacks. Free blacks, our libres, were very unique to Louisiana and especially New Orleans for they were a growing group and played an integral role in New Orleans society.
             Bounded Lives, Bounded Places by Kimberly S. Hanger examines the libres of New Orleans from the perspective of its free black residents and exposes the advances they made in many different facets of colonial life. Hanger shows how that the blacks in New Orleans, although not all yearning for more opportunity, received more under the influence of the Spanish crown than they would have under the rule of the other European or even early American jurisidictions.
             Hanger did an exemplary role or not only maintaining a strong focus on Spanish Louisiana but also providing for frequent views of other parts of the Americas placing colonial New Orleans in framework of Carribean and Latin American History. However she does emphasize on the Spanish influences on New Orleans after it was purchased by America during the Jefferson administration.
             The free colored became a sort of elite, Hanger argues, and placed firmly "in a middle stratum between whites and slaves" (108). With sufficient opportunity for movement within the free black community and on occasion into white society, the libres was able "to forge their own identity and create an elite leadership based on wealth, kin connections, and militia service. In order to advance their status, they intertwined ties between such corporate parents a
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