What is it about?
Chapter 5 – Juan Miranda and Four Years of Struggle This chapter, from 26 YEARS A SLAVE: JUAN MIRANDA AND OTHER "SPANISH NEGROES" IN COLONIAL NEW YORK, recounts part of a remarkable yet little-known freedom case from colonial New York. Juan Miranda, a free Black man from Cartagena, had been enslaved in New York for over two decades when, in 1754, two men from abroad testified that he had been born free. Their sworn and translated statements became central to Miranda’s four-year legal battle for freedom, supported by William Kempe, the colony’s Attorney General. Miranda’s case unfolded in a complex landscape shaped by political instability, shifting colonial leadership, and entrenched racial prejudice. The legal process was slow and uncertain, and Miranda remained in limbo as Kempe gathered evidence and challenged the prevailing assumption that Blackness meant enslavement. The Van Ranst family, who claimed to own Miranda, actively resisted his claim by producing questionable testimony and claiming to have lost a bill of sale. At the heart of the case was a powerful legal and moral question: Could a free Black subject of the Spanish crown be held as a slave in a British colony simply because of his race? Kempe responded not with abolitionist rhetoric—which would have been politically risky—but with a legal strategy grounded in international law. He argued that free men could not be enslaved, even if they were Black and born outside the British Empire. In 1758, Miranda’s case finally reached the Supreme Court of New York, with Kempe continuing to represent him. The court granted Miranda permission to sue “in forma pauperis”—as a poor man—marking a rare moment in which a Black person challenged his enslavement through the colonial legal system with official backing.
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Why is it important?
This chapter sheds light on early legal resistance to slavery in the British Atlantic world and highlights how international law and personal advocacy could, at times, open cracks in the institution of slavery—even in societies built to uphold it.
Perspectives
Writing this chapter was both intellectually demanding and emotionally resonant. Juan Miranda’s story stood out to me because it disrupts the dominant narratives of slavery in colonial North America—reminding us that New York, too, was a site of brutal racial exploitation and resistance. I was drawn to the ways this case reveals the fragility and contradictions of slavery when challenged by law, memory, and the sheer will of the enslaved. I hope that bringing Miranda’s voice into the historical record helps readers see that freedom was not only denied but also actively fought for—even under the most daunting conditions. Cases like this one, largely forgotten or overlooked, show that the legal system in colonial New York was not monolithic; it had openings, however narrow, that people like Juan Miranda sought to navigate. For me, uncovering this struggle was a way of honoring that effort—and exposing the layered, trans-imperial histories of slavery and Black resistance in the Atlantic world.
Dr. Beatriz Carolina Peña
Queens College
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This page is a summary of: Juan Miranda and Four Years of Struggle, September 2025, De Gruyter,
DOI: 10.1163/9789004733770_007.
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