This essay uses the diary of free black barber and Natchez, Mississippi, businessman William T. Johnson as a means to explore the extent to which one black man in the antebellum U.S. South knew the law; how he came to know it; and what role he saw it play in his life and community. In recent years, scholars have paid increasing attention to black Americans' engagement with the legal system in the pre-Civil War U.S. South and have undermined the notion that black people were legal outsiders. In particular, they have shown that African Americans in the slave South were legal actors in their own right and were legally savvy. Yet what does it mean when scholars say that free blacks and slaves knew how to use the law? This essay uses Johnson's diary to demystify the phrase “to know the law” and shows that we speak of “knowing the law,” we speak of a remarkably complex and uneven phenomenon, one best mapped on a case-to-case basis. Understanding what it meant “to know the law” sometimes requires examining an individual's personal theory or hypothesis of what law does for them.

中文翻译：

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威廉约翰逊的假设：一个自由的黑人和战前美国南部的法律知识问题

本文使用自由黑人理发师和密西西比州纳奇兹商人威廉·T·约翰逊的日记作为探索战前美国南部一名黑人对法律的了解程度的一种手段；他是怎么知道的；以及他看到它在他的生活和社区中扮演什么角色。近年来，学者们越来越关注内战前美国南部的美国黑人参与法律制度，并削弱了黑人是合法外来者的观念。特别是，他们表明，南方奴隶制的非裔美国人本身就是合法的行为者，并且精通法律。然而，当学者们说自由的黑人和奴隶知道如何使用法律时，这是什么意思？这篇文章使用约翰逊的日记来揭开“知道法律”这个短语的神秘面纱，并表明我们所说的“知道法律，”我们谈到了一种非常复杂和不平衡的现象，最好根据具体情况进行映射。理解“了解法律”的含义有时需要检查个人的个人理论或关于法律为他们做了什么的假设。