Passports to the Atlantic: Enslaved and Free Travelers of Color from nineteenth Century New Orleans, 1818-1831 examines a collection of passports granted by the city of New Orleans for enslaved and free people of color to travel outside of the city. Between the years 1818 and 1831, the city required enslaved and free travelers of color going to places as close as across Lake Pontchartrain and as distant as Europe to obtain passports from the Mayor’s Office. During the thirteen years the passports remained a travel prerequisite for travelers of color, New Orleans issued passports for 481 people of African descent. The 481 travelers of color listed in the collection of passports includes both male and female travelers as well as adults and children. In the passports, the city documented information such as the names, ages, statuses, sex, racial designations, heights, physical descriptions, birthplaces, methods of travel, and destinations of the travelers of color. Using this information, Passports to the Atlantic discusses the experience of people of African descent inhabiting New Orleans in the early nineteenth century as well as their connections to the Atlantic World. This dissertation considers issues such as race, mobility, status, and disability to demonstrate the diversity of black life in New Orleans.