What happens when 125,000 Chinese indentured men and enslaved African men and women work side by side on Cuban sugar plantations in the late nineteenth century? Nowhere else in history did these groups of unfree laborers meet in the same time and place. This unique encounter raises questions about race, class, and gender: Were the Chinese considered black or white, slave or free? How did the absence of Chinese women shape relations between Asians and Africans? Ultimately, were the Chinese “coolies” slaves like their black co-workers, or did they move toward freedom? This lecture explores these questions through key Cuban archival documents.