Manuel Vicente Alves, doctor Jacarandá

Racial challenges and legal practices in Rio de Janeiro during the First Republic

Abstract

From the observations of the sociologist Pierre Bourdeu regarding the "biographical illusion," this article aims to analyze the trajectory of the black lawyer and politician Manuel Vicente Alves, more popularly known as Doctor Jacarandá in Rio de Janeiro of the first decades of the 20th century. Despite appearing in verbatim accounts of the dictionaries compiled by social scientist Nei Lopes and historians Flávio Gomes and Lilia Schwarcz, Dr. Jacarandá deserves greater attention from historians, for he was a black man who marked a presence in a labour market composed mostly of white and elite men. Despite the racial tensions of his time, in the advocacy market carioca, Manuel Alves did not "know his place" in black, on the contrary, made the forum a place of legal speech in favor of workers and low-income workers of Rio de Janeiro, of anti-racist struggle and social and professional affirmation in the face of racism and prejudice of press. As the researchers Lélia Gonzáles and Carlos Hasenbalg suggest, this place of speech of the causative ceased to be a place of white oppression and became a place of black protagonism.