Research Colloquium Event: What Happened to Lydia's Savings?

In 2009, I was invited to write an essay on the savings accounts of enslaved people for an institutional book commemorating the 150th anniversary of Caixa Econômica Federal, in Brazil. Since its foundation, the bank had received deposits from enslaved persons, who were saving their earnings to purchase their freedom. Nowadays, in the light of contemporary discussions on reparations for slavery in the Atlantic world, I decided to revisit the topic, asking myself a question that now seems obvious: what happened to the savings of enslaved individuals deposited in the Caixa Econômica after the abolition of slavery? Initially, the purpose of these accounts was to enable the purchase of manumission. But once everyone was freed, what happened to the money? Was it ever redeemed by the freed people and their families? With this research, I aim to answer this question. It seems simple, but it could affect the lives of many descendants of enslaved people who, in the 19th century, entrusted their savings to Caixa Econômica.

Keila Grinberg is Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh and Director of the Center for Latin American Studies. A native of Rio de Janeiro, she joined Pitt after being a member of the History Department of the Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro for almost twenty years. During that time, she also had appointments as Visiting Professor at Northwestern University and at the University of Michigan, as Tinker Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago and as the Andrés Bello Chair in Latin American Cultures and Civilizations at NYU. A specialist on slavery and race in the Atlantic World, she has authored, co-authored, and edited several books and articles in Portuguese, English, Spanish, French, and Russian, including A Black Jurist in a Slave Society: Antonio Pereira Rebouças and the Trials of Brazilian Citizenship (UNC Press, 2019), a finalist of the 2020 Frederick Douglass Book Prize. She also co-directs the public digital history project "Present Pasts: Memories of Slavery in Brazil." Her most recent research project examines nineteenth-century cases of kidnapping and illegal enslavement on the southern Brazilian border. She is also interested in Jewish History, the teaching and writing of History, and memory and public history of slavery.

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