Coolies and Cane: Race, Labor, and Sugar in the Age of Emancipation

2007 Winner of the Merle Curti Intellectual History Award of the Organization of American Historians, 2006 Winner of the History/Social Science Book Award of the Association of Asian American Studies

How did thousands of Chinese migrants end up working alongside African Americans in Louisiana after the Civil War? With the stories of these workers, Coolies and Cane advances an interpretation of emancipation that moves beyond U.S. borders and the black—white racial dynamic. Tracing American id...