After a long and courageous battle against Parkinson’s, Sandra Lauderdale Graham passed away on July 23, 2024, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, at the age of eighty-one years. A native of Billings Montana, she received a BA in Sociology from the University of Colorado, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa; a MA in Sociology from Cornell University; and a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin.

A creative scholar and a beautiful writer, Sandra was always fascinated by “the particular in the up-close examinations of identifiable persons … confident that these single cases can speak to larger matters.”Footnote ¹ This sharp focus can be seen in her first publication on Rio de Janeiro, which began as a seminar paper written as a graduate student. The subject was a riot that erupted in 1880 over a rise in the tram fare, and prominent in the story was a self-proclaimed gadfly, José Lopes da Silva Trovão. Published in the Hispanic American Historical Review (1980), the article illustrates the shift in political culture as politics moved out of the chambers of Parliament and into the city streets. Using Clifford Geertz’s concept of an “instructive explosion,” Sandra delved into the complex changes afoot in Rio in this crucial decade that would end with the abolition of slavery and the fall of the empire. Brazilian historian Flávio Gomes (Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro) remembers that, when this article was published in translation ten years later in Brazil, “it became a milestone in Brazilian historiography” because of its social history approach, sources, and deep, careful, articulate analysis. Historian Guilherme Neves (Universidade Federal Fluminense), who translated the article into Portuguese, remembers working closely with Sandra and recalls that “she discussed every word I chose.” This attention to detail and to clear communication, whether in English or Portuguese, would characterize all of Sandra’s future writings.

Sandra’s first book, House and Street: The Domestic World of Servants and Masters in Nineteenth-Century Rio de Janeiro, focuses on domestic servants, material culture, daily work, gender roles, and the agency of the enslaved and non-enslaved in nineteenth-century Rio de Janeiro. This urban anthropology required painstaking research in archival sources, a major challenge given the way that archives in Rio had been organized. Sandra found innovative ways to locate new kinds of sources that brought to light the lives of individuals rarely written about. Her passion for archival research can be seen in all of her work.

In Caetana Says No: Women’s Stories from a Brazilian Slave Society—her most widely read and taught book—readers are exposed to the complex and unexpected power dynamics in rural slave societies in Brazil. Divided into two parts, the first tells the story of an enslaved young woman who refused to marry the man selected for her by her owner, and the second recounts how a woman from a prominent family tried to free her enslaved people, and to give them land, but ultimately failed. Each story begins with a document—in part one, a divorce case and in part two, a will—and Sandra plumbs every word and follows every clue to reconstruct the communities in which each woman lived. Hal Langfur (State University of New York [SUNY]-Buffalo) recalls that his students “are taken with it every time we read it together” for “Sandra’s empathy with her historical subjects is on full display, along with her ability to draw deep insights from the sources’ slightest hints, nuances, and lacunae.” In translation, Caetana diz não became something of a bestseller in Brazil.

In a variety of articles Sandra explored the lives of prostitutes, street sellers, and literacy in a slave society. Flávio Gomes reflects that “her fine eye, variety of sources and analytical restlessness” all stand out in her writings, as do her “rigorous historiographical discussions, and reconstructions of historical contexts.” One of these articles, “Being Yoruba in Nineteenth-Century Rio de Janeiro” (Slavery and Abolition, 2011) tells the remarkable story of Henriqueta, an African who arrived in Rio enslaved and purchased her freedom and that of her husband, only later to divorce him, all from her earnings as a street seller. This article became the basis for a bi-lingual Esri StoryMap, Henriqueta’s Day on the Streets, Rio de Janeiro, 1850s/O cotidiano de Henriqueta nas ruas do Rio de Janeiro nos anos de 1850, which uses maps and historical images to recreate how Henriqueta moved through the streets of the city. In 2020, during the coronavirus disease (COVID) pandemic, Guilherme Neves used this StoryMap extensively and found that it was a great success with his students because of its compelling story and interactive nature.

Sandra taught sociology at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia, and history at Mt. Holyoke College, the University of Texas, and the University of New Mexico. At La Trobe she was part of the exciting time when Latin American and Brazilian studies were first taught in Australia. There she formed a lifetime friendship with Inga Clendinnen. At Mt. Holyoke, she was the Five College Brazilianist and brought the history of Brazil to students at each of the colleges and the University of Massachusetts. At the University of Texas, she and Richard Graham made Brazilian history an integral part of the curriculum for both undergraduate and graduate students. Hal Langfur remembers that Sandra urged him “to be bold” as an historian but to “be honest about the limitations” of what historians could know and could not know. James Sidbury (Rice University), a colleague of Sandra’s at the University of Texas, remembers that she and Richard fostered deep conversations and the sharing of work-in-progress among graduate students and junior faculty interested in race and slavery throughout the Americas. At the University of New Mexico, her student Suzanne Stamatov recalls her as a demanding and exacting teacher with high standards for students. In her teaching, “she asked us to consider all the complexities and nuances of the people of the past,” and she spent hours working with each student on their writing.

Sandra’s passion for teaching can also be seen in her contribution of the documents on Brazil in The Documentary History of Colonial Latin America, co-edited with Kenneth Mills and William B. Taylor. In her teaching, she stressed to students the richness and complexities of primary sources, and she always encouraged students to read them deeply to begin to understand the complexities of the past. This valuable collection has enriched many classrooms.

Sandra was devoted to Richard Graham, whom she married in 1978. They shared a profound commitment to each other; to their research and writing; to their friends and colleagues; and to his sons, their wives, and their grandchildren. Sandra was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in her early sixties but never let the disease interfere with her passion for research, writing, exploration of new ideas, and love for family. After she and Richard retired to New Mexico, they immersed themselves in the outdoors, the deep history of the indigenous communities of the Southwest, rock art, the intellectual vibrancy of Santa Fe, and the creativity of its artistic community. They loved sharing their research at home with each other, and they joked about their “mini-seminars” at the breakfast table. Barbara Sommer (Gettysburg College, emerita) recalls that, in the fall of 1999, not long after Sandra and Richard’s move to Santa Fe, Sandra brought together a group of local historians and anthropologists who worked on Latin America and the US Southwest. This supportive community of scholars adopted the name the “Santa Fe Seminar,” and it met periodically for nearly a decade to read and discuss works-in-progress by the members. The interdisciplinary nature of the workshop contributed to perceptive questions, lively discussion, and useful suggestions under the influence of their “sugar-laden espressos,” according to one participant. As Richard Flint, a student at the University of New Mexico and a friend, reminisced, “We all benefitted from those many group discussions of our work, which we ultimately owe to Sandra.”

Sandra loved Brazil, especially Rio de Janeiro where her favorite neighborhoods were Santa Teresa and Copacabana. In Rio she relaxed at the beach on the weekends after long days immersed in the archives. A wonderful cook, she looked forward to selecting the best fresh fruits and vegetables at the weekly feiras (open air markets). On one of their last visits to Rio, Guilherme Neves and Lucia Bastos (Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro) took Sandra and Richard to visit one of the coffee fazendas along the Paraíba valley. The garden was in ruins and the house closed to visitors, yet they fully enjoyed clambering down the steps overgrown with wild vegetation and exploring the site.

As the disease took its toll on Sandra’s body, she continued to work on what was to be her last book, When Family Fails, in which she intended to explore how Brazilian families coped with disease, death, poverty, conflict, and divorce. Unfortunately left unfinished at her death, three chapters survive that, it is to be hoped, can be eventually published. Many colleagues and friends will miss her dearly, as summed up by Laura de Mello e Sousa (Sorbonne Université) who expressed great sadness that the “wonderful friend and imaginative historian” has left us. May she rest in peace.