The Legal Fight for Freedom: Graduate Student Research
U.S. Law and Race Initiative
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06/25/2024
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3
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Mellon Graduate Fellows in U.S. Law and Race present their research on legal cases of enslaved people seeking freedom, along with a discussion about the importance of building research models that bring such stories into a broader conversation about American history.
Dr. William G. Thomas III facilitates the discussion. This event was sponsored by the University Libraries.
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- [00:00:09.000]So hi everybody I'm Will Thomas I'm the Angle Chair in the Humanities and a
- [00:00:14.520]Professor of History here at the University of Nebraska and it's my great
- [00:00:19.300]pleasure also to be the director of and a co-PI with Professor Jagodinsky and
- [00:00:25.240]Professor Jeannette Jones of a Mellon-funded initiative that's Mellon
- [00:00:30.400]Foundation-funded initiative here at the University of Nebraska on U.S. law and
- [00:00:37.380]race and so we received this grant a year ago we're one year into a three and
- [00:00:43.380]a half year funded program and it's a collaboration
- [00:00:47.840]between the Department of
- [00:00:49.120]History and the College of Law here at Nebraska
- [00:00:52.940]and the University Libraries
- [00:00:55.120]especially the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities a key partner
- [00:01:00.080]on this project and as you just heard from
- [00:01:02.700]Professor Jagodinsky we are
- [00:01:07.060]developing a collaboratively-built open educational resource that will be
- [00:01:11.780]available to anyone in the United States anyone in the world of materials the
- [00:01:17.260]cases you just heard about to teach U.S. law and race and the history of law and
- [00:01:26.000]race in the United States and so we're locating and
- [00:01:29.520]we're making accessible and
- [00:01:32.280]we're documenting the history of U.S. law in relation to race and this is a
- [00:01:39.540]project that that includes a lot of different components the open
- [00:01:44.940]educational resource that will be available
- [00:01:47.220]is one of them a series of
- [00:01:49.840]courses here at the University of Nebraska is another major component of
- [00:01:54.900]what we're doing we have a new freshman course called "And
- [00:01:58.460]Justice For All" that
- [00:02:00.780]we where we cover the development of U.S. legal history especially with
- [00:02:05.700]relationship to race from the colonial period to present and some of the
- [00:02:10.620]stories that you've just heard about are in that curriculum we are also working
- [00:02:16.480]with community partners to encourage storytelling from descendants and those
- [00:02:22.760]who have been affected by this history and our two principal partners our
- [00:02:27.620]Vision Maker Media right here in Lincoln Nebraska indigenous filmmakers
- [00:02:32.160]who are going to contribute media and documentary films to this large
- [00:02:37.860]collective project and the other is the Institute for Politics, Policy, and
- [00:02:42.080]History at the University of the District of Columbia in Washington, D.C.,
- [00:02:46.680]and they are contributing stories to to this project well it's my pleasure to
- [00:02:53.640]introduce our our three graduate students who are with us today they are
- [00:02:58.380]Mellon Graduate Fellows they applied to this program it's a three-week program
- [00:03:04.680]here at the Digital Legal Research Lab with
- [00:03:08.020]us and their the intent is for this
- [00:03:13.060]fellowship to encourage and develop their research
- [00:03:16.740]on U.S. law and race and so
- [00:03:19.080]you're gonna hear from each one of them about their
- [00:03:22.020]research the advanced state
- [00:03:23.960]of work that they're undertaking, and the contributions that
- [00:03:28.180]they're making and so
- [00:03:29.540]I think we're gonna go in chronological order
- [00:03:32.420]and we are in-- we are in
- [00:03:33.840]chronological look at that. Taneil Ruffin from Princeton University will
- [00:03:38.180]start and then Hannah Simmons from Northwestern University
- [00:03:41.240]will follow and
- [00:03:42.540]then Kasha Appleton from Indiana University
- [00:03:44.780]will conclude and so you need
- [00:03:47.500]a mic do you have a mic okay right there all right
- [00:03:49.580]So Taneil please. Hello great
- [00:03:52.480]hi everyone thank you all for being here I'm Taneil I go to Princeton usually
- [00:03:58.100]I'm getting my PhD or I'm I'm typically there right now I'm here I'm getting my
- [00:04:04.480]PhD in history and I'm also a certificate
- [00:04:06.540]student in African-American
- [00:04:08.060]Studies at Princeton I don't need to wax poetic like I was going to do about how
- [00:04:13.320]great it's been to be here obviously I learned so much from the undergrads I
- [00:04:17.600]learned so much from Dr. Jagodinsky and Dr. Thomas and Dr. Jones in the like
- [00:04:21.700]days that we've been here so I'm gonna try to give
- [00:04:24.380]an abre- abridge presentation
- [00:04:26.420]of my already abridge presentation about my dissertation and if you have
- [00:04:31.400]questions I'm very happy to continue to talk more so today I'm just gonna give
- [00:04:37.540]you a snapshot of a life of a free African-American boy a part of his
- [00:04:42.720]young adulthood his name was John Roach I first learned about John Roach
- [00:04:47.020]through his 1817 freedom suit but I later found documents that were able to
- [00:04:52.320]reveal a bit more about his life even after the suit and I like some people
- [00:04:56.380]mentioned it's hard to follow a lot of these people sometimes even the case
- [00:05:01.040]alone doesn't tell us too much and definitely not with certainty about
- [00:05:04.860]people's experiences but honestly it's taken
- [00:05:09.160]me like all of this academic year
- [00:05:11.040]to get a lot of what you see on the screen yeah a lot of what you see on
- [00:05:16.380]the screen it was reorganized from when I put it together so yes okay so I'll
- [00:05:23.340]start with the freedom suit which is part of it is over here on your right
- [00:05:28.400]and then I'm gonna end with the big payment order and there's like five
- [00:05:33.220]years in between there so I'm gonna try to go quickly between that and let me
- [00:05:37.280]know when I'm thank you all right John Roach was about 19 years old when he
- [00:05:44.600]petitioned the First District Court of New Orleans for his freedom in February
- [00:05:48.440]of 1817 despite being born free in Philadelphia which is also my hometown
- [00:05:53.300]John Roach claimed that a man referred to in these documents as Jay Holland was
- [00:05:58.740]detaining him in the city jail when I first came across the suit I knew it was
- [00:06:03.840]a freedom suit and I knew the outcome of the suit because I had encountered it
- [00:06:07.180]through a database much like what you all are working on now it started I
- [00:06:13.100]think before I was born though but a database that a few scholars had done
- [00:06:16.420]the work of finding these petitions scanning them uploading them and they
- [00:06:21.140]didn't transcribe those documents like you all are doing but they did write
- [00:06:25.740]some summaries of the cases and I was I'm super fortunate for that because
- [00:06:30.160]this is what I'm supposed to be able to read to tell all that information from
- [00:06:35.700]it took me up until like two days ago and I've
- [00:06:39.900]been sitting with this case
- [00:06:40.720]for months now to understand what's going on on these pages so the work that
- [00:06:46.980]you all are doing is allowing me to and will allow future
- [00:06:50.440]scholars to be able to
- [00:06:51.460]ask new exciting questions about the history
- [00:06:55.320]of race and law so thank you in
- [00:06:57.060]advance for all the work that you're doing and so because I couldn't really
- [00:07:01.820]make out the outcome of this suit on the document itself I went to the sort
- [00:07:08.320]of middle pages and I learned a lot of really interesting
- [00:07:11.240]things in the few
- [00:07:12.740]middle pages that we have from this suit and I'm going to highlight two
- [00:07:17.600]interesting and surprising ones now if I find
- [00:07:21.800]it so one of the things that jumped
- [00:07:24.280]out to me as I was reading John Roach's initial petition was
- [00:07:27.960]that he asked the
- [00:07:31.780]allow Roach to work while his suit was pending and that Holland hold on to any
- [00:07:36.920]wages that Roach earned from his work during the freedom suit and lastly to
- [00:07:41.580]prohibit Roach from giving or selling him to another person while his suit was
- [00:07:47.500]pending and the judge ends up granting this request
- [00:07:50.120]and eventually I learned
- [00:07:52.120]that some of what the left half of the page on the screen says and so a
- [00:07:56.320]petitioner asking for petition to do work during the suit was something that
- [00:08:00.660]I never really thought of or had come across in my
- [00:08:03.460]reading of other historians
- [00:08:04.900]counts about freedom suits and I also thought it was interesting that the
- [00:08:09.220]person that was being tasked with like safekeeping John Roach and any money
- [00:08:14.940]that he had earned was a person that he was suing John or Jay Holland and it's
- [00:08:20.480]because Jay Holland was the sheriff of this parish of this area and but I
- [00:08:26.860]learned that after more research that wasn't readily apparent in the court
- [00:08:30.440]documents and so I had to turn to the Louisiana Code
- [00:08:33.740]of Civil Procedure from
- [00:08:34.880]1856 that's not something I would usually do and it's not something I
- [00:08:40.380]thought I would do ever and so I learned that although
- [00:08:43.740]Roach wasn't using the
- [00:08:45.120]exact language of what's in the code of civil procedure Roach and his lawyer
- [00:08:48.940]were asking for a judicial sequestration which
- [00:08:51.700]is language that's in the code of
- [00:08:53.480]civil procedure and according to that someone could ask the sheriff and I'm
- [00:09:00.080]gonna quote here to take in his possession and keep a thing of which
- [00:09:04.280]another person has the possession until after
- [00:09:06.500]the decision of the suit so this
- [00:09:09.440]this accounts in my read for what Roach was doing in the freedom suit he wanted
- [00:09:14.940]judicial sequestration and this is something that I'm still trying to
- [00:09:19.720]understand in the dissertation project for me
- [00:09:23.180]the fact that Roach asked to be
- [00:09:25.660]hired out and sequestered situates him and what I'm thinking of as legal limbo
- [00:09:30.400]yep that's up there so he's not treated completely as a
- [00:09:34.280]free person during his
- [00:09:35.600]suit according to civil procedure judges order that things or property are
- [00:09:40.820]sequestered so he's consenting or Roach is consenting to being thought of as a
- [00:09:45.600]thing property to be sequestered however the
- [00:09:48.900]ability that he has to work on his
- [00:09:51.260]own and potentially claim those wages as his own is not something that we'd
- [00:09:56.420]think someone who has the status of a slave would be able to do so he's kind
- [00:10:00.280]of existing in between being a thing a property slave but also but also he's
- [00:10:06.380]able to potentially earn his own money so it's sort of unclear and I'm still
- [00:10:09.860]trying to think through what that what that meant in his life and what that
- [00:10:14.340]might mean for law another thing that I wanted to flag is like I mentioned John
- [00:10:22.360]Roach is from Philadelphia and I was curious about how he came to be from
- [00:10:26.960]Philadelphia in the early 19th century to Louisiana
- [00:10:29.840]and unsurprisingly that's
- [00:10:32.320]disputed in the depositions in the case so Roach himself said that he had been
- [00:10:36.720]illegally enslaved for 10 months on a sugar plantation about 50 miles west of
- [00:10:40.980]New Orleans by members of a super powerful family
- [00:10:43.880]called the Roman family
- [00:10:44.920]the plantation that they owned is like now a historic site well it's starting
- [00:10:51.540]to become a historic site it's a tourist it's a tourist site right now too and
- [00:10:55.280]it's super interesting but after the 10 months that Roach labored on the
- [00:11:00.780]plantation he was brought to the New Orleans jail as a runaway slave
- [00:11:05.720]allegedly and in the jail he found or he met this man that he claimed knew him
- [00:11:11.600]back in Philadelphia he was a sailor and it turns out that when John Roach was
- [00:11:17.180]much younger he lived near the docks in Philadelphia
- [00:11:19.820]which are pictured behind
- [00:11:22.220]my head up here and his mother was like a washer woman for a lot of the crews on
- [00:11:27.800]these ships that would dock in Philadelphia so John would carry dirty
- [00:11:32.040]clothes from the ship to his mother's house his mom will wash them and then
- [00:11:36.080]he'd take them back to the ship and so that's how he
- [00:11:38.240]just happened to know this
- [00:11:39.760]white sailor who ends up in the jail where Roach is detained as a fugitive
- [00:11:45.500]slave at the moment when he launches his freedom suit
- [00:11:48.400]which still doesn't really
- [00:11:50.880]answer how he gets from Philadelphia to New Orleans but I'm sort of speculating
- [00:11:57.740]along with this sailor the sailor says that John Roach probably left to find
- [00:12:02.540]work which seemed odd to me that someone would leave
- [00:12:05.340]Philadelphia in the early
- [00:12:06.520]19th century this is a place where slavery has
- [00:12:09.240]gradually been abolished at
- [00:12:11.260]this point it's home to a free Black community
- [00:12:14.300]there are like abolitionist
- [00:12:16.600]organizations anti-racist organizations and movements
- [00:12:19.820]at this point why would a
- [00:12:22.120]teenager have to leave a city like this to find work I still don't know all the
- [00:12:27.600]answers to that but it's something that I'm exploring and the reason I bring it
- [00:12:31.060]up today is because I think it sort of resonates with this issue that some of
- [00:12:34.780]the students brought up and what Juneteenth commemorates about the the
- [00:12:38.580]issues of geography and the importance of place when we talk about slavery and
- [00:12:41.740]freedom and so while we might think often scholars
- [00:12:44.920]and like popular audiences
- [00:12:46.280]might think of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania or just the antebellum
- [00:12:51.840]for a safe haven for African Americans during this period I have found evidence
- [00:12:56.300]that African Americans like John Roach willingly left the city sometimes went
- [00:13:02.140]to New Orleans to indenture themselves so to learn a trade to have like more
- [00:13:06.260]lucrative careers for themselves later in life
- [00:13:09.300]so all right one more one more
- [00:13:13.100]document then I'll wrap up so John ends up winning winning
- [00:13:17.720]his suit about nine
- [00:13:20.200]months after the initial filing but and that's usually where the trail ends but
- [00:13:25.420]not for me I just run a search again of his name and I was able to find another
- [00:13:30.200]case that he participated in in this case he is a defendant this time not the
- [00:13:35.720]plaintiff and he's being sued for $150 plus interest
- [00:13:40.420]because apparently during
- [00:13:42.060]his suit he took he asked someone for a loan to help cover the expenses that he
- [00:13:46.640]incurred during the suit and he agreed to repay the loan by indenturing himself
- [00:13:51.000]so working for this person for 18 months obviously we have the court record so he
- [00:13:56.360]didn't do that and so the judge decides that John Roach has to repay these
- [00:14:01.980]people $150 with interest and truly the last document this time turns out he
- [00:14:07.180]doesn't do that either or I suspect that he doesn't do
- [00:14:09.400]that either because like
- [00:14:11.180]three days ago I found this promissory note from the mayor of New Orleans may
- [00:14:16.280]payable to John Holland or Jay Holland the same person that John Roach sued
- [00:14:21.120]five years earlier and the mayor is agreeing to pay Jay Holland for the
- [00:14:25.460]labor of four Black people who work on the chain gang one of them is a Jay Roach
- [00:14:30.300]and so okay you all are having a great reaction to me like I think it's him I
- [00:14:38.300]can't say for sure if it is him but I will suggest
- [00:14:42.020]to this audience that seems
- [00:14:43.960]to agree with me that it's likely that this Jay Roach is the same Jay Roach
- [00:14:47.760]that I started with the document says that this Roach worked a hundred and
- [00:14:52.720]eight days between July 3rd of 1822 to December 3rd of 1822 the work that he
- [00:14:58.020]performed was what twice was worth $27 but this $27 goes back to Holland it's
- [00:15:03.420]not going to Roach and so I'll leave you with that because that's also kind of
- [00:15:08.780]what I'm left with starting this story of a successful freedom suit the court
- [00:15:13.200]did affirm Roach's freedom in 1817 but we're gonna stop in 1822 where he's
- [00:15:20.660]back in a situation of unfreedom with the person he sued to begin with so
- [00:15:25.720]thank you.
- [00:15:35.500]Hello everyone my name is Hannah Simmons as it says up there I am
- [00:15:40.280]a fourth year PhD student at Northwestern in the History Department
- [00:15:43.480]I'm also getting my certificate at Northwestern in Gender and Sexuality
- [00:15:46.840]Studies yeah so I'm really happy to be here I'm really excited to tell you
- [00:15:51.520]more about my research just also wanted to say the undergrads you all did an
- [00:15:54.500]amazing job and I'm so happy that you all went first because I'm gonna talk
- [00:15:57.700]about freedom suits and typically I have to
- [00:15:59.180]explain what that is but you all did
- [00:16:00.720]that so I get to cut something out of my presentation so thank you okay so as I
- [00:16:05.740]said I centralized freedom suits so my work looks at the freedom suits of a
- [00:16:10.480]woman named Judy her daughter Celeste and Aspasia and her grandchildren Andrew
- [00:16:15.360]Lewis and Celestine so when I was thinking about how to prepare for this
- [00:16:19.100]presentation I decided that the best way to convey my research was in a narrative
- [00:16:23.360]form both because this is how I plan to write my
- [00:16:26.320]dissertation and because I
- [00:16:27.620]believe that one of the goals of a freedom suit is to create a compelling
- [00:16:31.040]narrative with a strong argument so I've divided this presentation into four
- [00:16:36.840]stories centralizing the family at the heart of my research the first two
- [00:16:40.920]narratives focused primarily on Judy the last two focus on her descendants
- [00:16:45.300]after each narrative I will go give a breakdown of what I have told you all
- [00:16:49.900]and how it relates to the greater themes of my work the following is
- [00:16:54.140]narrative one which is drawn from the first two slides on yeah the first two
- [00:17:00.960]sorry the first two images on the slide so here we go on January 9th 1837 Judy
- [00:17:08.480]stood in the st. Louis County Circuit Court
- [00:17:10.780]and dipped her quill into a pot of
- [00:17:12.540]black ink carefully fixing her mark on a light brown piece of parchment she
- [00:17:18.600]might have breathed a small sigh of relief as the court clerk John Ruland
- [00:17:22.220]took the paper from her and folded it carefully before putting it in his coat
- [00:17:26.260]although it was only two pages the documents had the potential to change
- [00:17:30.500]not only her life but the lives of her family members as well because just a
- [00:17:36.860]petition to sue her master a free Black man named John Barry Meacham for
- [00:17:41.580]illegally holding her as a slave at the time she was about 51 years old and
- [00:17:46.680]seven different men had owned her and moved her across slave and free
- [00:17:50.200]territories let me say that again seven different men had owned her and moved
- [00:17:54.140]her across slave and free territories on its own Judy's case allows one to see
- [00:17:59.320]the overlap between the law and movement across slave and free territories
- [00:18:03.160]however Judy's case did not stand alone on January 7th and January 9th 1837
- [00:18:09.060]Judy stood in a courtroom five times citing her mark on the freedom suits of
- [00:18:13.300]her daughters Celeste and Aspasia and her grandchildren Andrew Lewis and Celeste
- [00:18:17.540]sorry Andrew and Celeste teen so from January 7th 1837 to May 29th 1843 Judy
- [00:18:25.380]who I said was 51 Celeste 34 Aspasia 30 Andrew 16 Lewis who we don't know the
- [00:18:32.440]age of and Celeste teen who I just found out was one year old and I kind of
- [00:18:37.140]love that because I have the image of Judy bringing in her grandchild like
- [00:18:41.720]carrying her into the courtroom so she can sue for her freedom so they all
- [00:18:46.380]went into the st. Louis and st. Charles County Circuit Court
- [00:18:49.100]some of them were
- [00:18:50.180]coming together and some by themselves but each time they entered the court to
- [00:18:53.860]as I said established their freedom in the end despite retrials witness and
- [00:18:58.740]defendant absences and distance Judy Celeste Aspasia Andrew and Celeste teen
- [00:19:03.100]all won their freedom it's possible that Lewis also did but I haven't found any
- [00:19:07.160]thing to confirm that yet the family's engagement with
- [00:19:11.040]the legal system shows
- [00:19:12.060]that they understood that the same legal system that justified their freedom
- [00:19:16.960]sorry their enslavement also justified their
- [00:19:19.480]freedom so rather than viewing the
- [00:19:22.380]family's lawsuits as remarkable my research
- [00:19:26.380]is part of a growing body of
- [00:19:27.820]scholarship which you all are doing as well that shows enslaved people's legal
- [00:19:31.500]savvy using Judy and her family's freedom suits
- [00:19:34.480]my dissertation argues
- [00:19:35.640]that through Judy and her family's cases one can see how motherhood the
- [00:19:39.900]evolution of the local and national legal systems the overlap between slave
- [00:19:43.760]and free states and territories and the old in the old Northwest and physical
- [00:19:48.020]and verbal movement allowed enslaved people
- [00:19:50.260]to sue for their freedom to do
- [00:19:52.220]this I build on scholarships centralizing
- [00:19:54.080]enslaved motherhood legal
- [00:19:55.460]history and legal history of enslavement and Black legal history however in the
- [00:20:00.900]interest of time I'm going to focus primarily on the place of freedom suits
- [00:20:04.060]and the legal history of slavery and motherhood to claim their freedom Judy
- [00:20:09.180]and her family relied on the second narrative I'm
- [00:20:11.920]reconstructing for this
- [00:20:12.960]presentation which I call Judy's background
- [00:20:15.380]narrative so Judy was born in
- [00:20:18.540]Virginia in 1786 when she was about 10 or 11 years old an unnamed person sold
- [00:20:24.420]her to Peter Macy who then brought her to Louisville
- [00:20:27.100]Kentucky well Kentucky had
- [00:20:29.280]only become a state in 1792 when Judy arrived in the early 1800s Kentucky
- [00:20:34.580]already had a large slave population of 40,000 through 40,000 343 people out of
- [00:20:41.480]220,000 959 people even Louisville one of the smallest towns at the time had a
- [00:20:47.980]slave population that outnumbered its white
- [00:20:49.880]population later a portion of the
- [00:20:52.740]slave population Judy included became part of the established trade from
- [00:20:56.720]Louisville Kentucky to Vincennes Indiana when
- [00:21:00.000]Judy was in her mid- teens
- [00:21:01.700]Macy sold her to a certain William Sullivan who kept her for a short time
- [00:21:06.320]about one or two years as a slave in 1799 a certain Robert Bunton a resident
- [00:21:12.420]of the town of Vincennes and this Northwestern territory
- [00:21:15.540]came to Louisville
- [00:21:16.900]to purchase Judy from Sullivan Sullivan then
- [00:21:20.000]received the sum of $250 for the
- [00:21:24.200]sale when Bunton brought Judy to Vincennes she was large tall and heavy
- [00:21:28.420]as the records say perhaps weighing 150 or 160 pounds I don't know how the
- [00:21:33.660]records know that but that is what they said she stayed in Vincennes for two
- [00:21:38.320]years or upwards according to the opening statement of all of Judy's
- [00:21:42.080]children and grandchildren's cases Bunton held
- [00:21:44.400]and treated her as a slave
- [00:21:45.820]Bunton then sold her to Toussaint Du Bois and brought her
- [00:21:49.960]to Cascascia then sold
- [00:21:51.300]her to Pierre Menard sometime between the year 1793 and 1804 Menard sold a
- [00:21:57.080]little black girl named Julia sorry named Judy to William Herbert LeComte
- [00:22:01.980]which someone mentioned yeah in St. Louis for $400 cash and sold her as a
- [00:22:08.020]slave for life while there is no indication of when and under what
- [00:22:11.940]circumstances John Barry Meacham a Black pastor and founder of the first Black
- [00:22:16.060]Baptist Church in St. Louis became Judy's enslaver on January 9th 1837
- [00:22:21.960]Judy sued him for her freedom so as you can see Judy's narrative is rich in
- [00:22:27.040]these textual details and fuller than I have
- [00:22:28.960]time to get into but what I want to
- [00:22:30.900]point out is the two legal complexities and Judy's and her family's cases the
- [00:22:35.400]first and most obvious one is enslavers and slave
- [00:22:38.380]tracker traffickers were
- [00:22:39.740]obviously disregarding the art article six of the Northwestern tort of the
- [00:22:45.540]Northwest ordinance this article ordained that there would be neither
- [00:22:48.660]slavery nor involuntary servitude in the Northwest Territory Judy was obviously
- [00:22:53.620]enslaved in the territory and sold as an enslaved person out
- [00:22:56.860]of the territory and
- [00:22:58.160]spent the majority of her life in St. Louis as an enslaved person my
- [00:23:02.400]dissertation is interrogating this disregard
- [00:23:04.780]to argue that rather than
- [00:23:06.020]viewing the Northwest Territory as a free space it is more are it is more
- [00:23:09.620]accurate to look at the Northwest Territory as a slave zone the second
- [00:23:13.840]point my dissertation makes is that the family used the legal system to render
- [00:23:18.640]their pursuit of generational freedom legible
- [00:23:21.300]in the eyes of the court so
- [00:23:23.460]what do we make of the freedom suits of Judy's
- [00:23:26.200]daughters and grandchildren who
- [00:23:27.720]claimed their right to establish or recover their freedom though they had
- [00:23:31.760]spent their entire lives in St. Louis beginning their
- [00:23:35.840]cases with an abridged
- [00:23:37.020]version of Judy's narrative and stating their relationship
- [00:23:39.620]to her indicates
- [00:23:40.940]that they understood that to collectively establish their rights to
- [00:23:44.260]freedom they relied on enslaved motherhood or the legal understanding of
- [00:23:49.320]it partus sequitur ventrem so often when people think about enslaved
- [00:23:53.460]motherhood they centralized partus sequitur ventrum which was a Virginia law
- [00:23:57.540]established in 1662 that definitively codified
- [00:24:01.680]hereditary slavery by
- [00:24:03.660]solidifying the idea that children would inherit their mother status this
- [00:24:08.500]is evident not only in Judy's move to establish her children's and
- [00:24:11.900]grandchildren's freedom but also in Celeste's pursuit of her children's
- [00:24:15.980]freedom so that brings me to my third narrative on September 12th 1838 John
- [00:24:23.620]Rowland clerk of the St. Louis Circuit Court wrote Celeste a woman of color for
- [00:24:29.480]herself and on behalf of her infant child
- [00:24:31.460]Celestine respectfully showeth
- [00:24:33.780]that she and her child her said child have separate
- [00:24:36.660]suits of freedom pending
- [00:24:38.020]in said court against Alexander Popone she states that herself and child have
- [00:24:44.360]these cases once submitted to a jury who did not agree in other words although
- [00:24:49.400]Celeste and Celestine's cases both appeared on January 9th 1837 by
- [00:24:55.400]September 12th 1838 they were still not free it also shows that up until that
- [00:25:00.840]same date Celeste and Celestine's cases were separate although there was never a
- [00:25:05.380]note in the court that stated that Celeste
- [00:25:07.740]was incorporating Celestine's
- [00:25:09.080]case into her own Celeste claimed that she is informed that the testimony before
- [00:25:14.320]the jury was in law strong and conclusive and in favor of their
- [00:25:18.180]freedom however Celeste states that she has
- [00:25:22.580]come to believe that neither she nor
- [00:25:24.640]her child can receive a fair trial in St. Louis County so she asks for the
- [00:25:28.540]court to submit the cases st. Charles County Court so I argue that
- [00:25:34.980]while Judy's presence and Celeste's case is essential Celeste's mark indicates that
- [00:25:39.840]at some point Celeste began to take her mother's legacy of suing not only for her
- [00:25:43.900]freedom but also suing for the freedom of her child which brings me to one of my
- [00:25:49.620]favorite points across all of the cases it's also the fourth narrative and I
- [00:25:53.900]just have to end with this one so on May 10th 1839
- [00:25:58.320]Juddwell C Powell clerk of
- [00:26:00.780]the St. Charles County Circuit Court wrote therefore it is considered by the
- [00:26:05.480]court that the said plaintiff Celeste be emancipated forever and set free of all
- [00:26:10.840]claims of said Alexander Poupon defendant and all claiming by through or
- [00:26:16.160]under him so while Celeste the last time we saw her is appearing as an
- [00:26:21.060]enslaved person she was then obviously granted her freedom and the next time
- [00:26:25.820]when we see Celeste on June 25th 1839 she returned as a free woman claim
- [00:26:32.460]asking for a thousand dollars in damages although she did lose this suit her
- [00:26:38.400]reappearance showed that she was obviously enjoying her rights to freedom
- [00:26:41.880]furthermore while it is not specified Celeste possibly sued for damage not
- [00:26:48.060]only as an act of enjoying her freedom but also to purchase her son Lewis since
- [00:26:53.040]around the same time she was suing for damages she was also bringing Lewis's
- [00:26:57.060]freedom suit to court whether or not she was suing for damages to purchase her
- [00:27:01.540]son one can see that she continued her mother's
- [00:27:04.060]legacy of establishing her
- [00:27:05.900]children's freedom through the court system so
- [00:27:08.800]again for the sake of time I
- [00:27:10.480]am only showing a portion of the family's freedom suits there are about
- [00:27:14.020]three hundred pages altogether of freedom suits alone so if you will have
- [00:27:17.860]any questions I would be happy to answer them that's that's what I have for you
- [00:27:22.740]all thank you for listening. Thank you so yeah we'll go to Kasha and then we'll
- [00:27:35.240]have a few minutes at the end for questions
- [00:27:37.120]for our graduate students
- [00:27:38.700]Kasha. I'll keep it short so my name is Kasha Appleton I
- [00:27:44.220]am a History PhD student
- [00:27:45.580]as well at Indiana University in Bloomington I have not written my
- [00:27:50.660]dissertation proposal yet so I'm throwing ideas
- [00:27:52.880]of what I hope to do at
- [00:27:55.120]you so please bear in mind that these are all
- [00:27:57.360]aspirations so my dissertation
- [00:28:01.560]research looks at mid 19th century Midwest Black mothers and their illegal
- [00:28:06.380]strategies to gain custody of their children from abusive spouses and
- [00:28:11.860]employers and I focus specifically on their use of habeas corpus we've heard
- [00:28:16.720]that term come up a lot as a legal strategy and I have to I always start my
- [00:28:22.780]presentations off by saying like six years ago I was in the same position as
- [00:28:27.060]these undergrads working with Dr. Jagodinsky transcribing 19th century
- [00:28:31.160]habeas petition so I feel your pain about transcribing them but also this is
- [00:28:36.800]where I found my dissertation topic and so I had to create a board a poster to
- [00:28:44.360]present and it was mostly on child custody and
- [00:28:48.240]habeas corporates like more
- [00:28:49.700]largely and I focused on Washington and Missouri but as I got more into my
- [00:28:56.400]program I realized I care about Black mothers I care about Black women and so
- [00:29:02.400]I narrowed down and I'm very happy with my topic and so I thought I would just
- [00:29:08.060]share like one case from my research and kind of talk about what I am drawing
- [00:29:12.300]from that case but yeah so not only am I interested in
- [00:29:18.100]the Black mothers use in
- [00:29:19.520]their legal strategies but also how they utilize a prototype of this like best
- [00:29:24.880]interest of the child language that is foundational to family law today we've
- [00:29:29.340]today we used like best interest of the child to determine
- [00:29:32.840]child custody and in
- [00:29:34.660]these cases I'm seeing that these these mothers are
- [00:29:37.880]positioning themselves as
- [00:29:39.380]the child's best interest and so I would like to argue that they are you know
- [00:29:44.100]ushering this in and then also I'm really interested
- [00:29:48.060]in thinking about what
- [00:29:48.960]kind of community ties these mothers had to help them get navigate the courts
- [00:29:53.400]what type of community did they have immediately after
- [00:29:57.800]their child was taken
- [00:29:58.540]from them who would they first go to you know who who shared in their sorrows
- [00:30:03.020]who helped them plan these strategies so I'm really interested in thinking about
- [00:30:08.780]their networks of navigation and community so I will start with a brief
- [00:30:15.020]definition of habeas because I always need it for myself so in its plainest
- [00:30:20.840]terms habeas is a recourse that protects people from
- [00:30:24.200]unlawful detainment at the
- [00:30:25.720]bare bones that's what it is and it was brought over
- [00:30:28.300]from England's common law
- [00:30:29.920]and so it was to protect people from the power of the king's council and the
- [00:30:34.620]king's court and so it requires captors to present
- [00:30:38.540]prisoners or people detained
- [00:30:40.800]to a judge so that the judge can decide upon that legality
- [00:30:45.680]of detainment and so
- [00:30:48.060]this was often done to ensure that jailers were operating under the
- [00:30:52.260]official authority of the courts when arresting and restraining people and
- [00:30:57.060]some scholars legal scholars refer to habeas as the most important say this
- [00:31:01.640]is a quote the most important safeguard of personal
- [00:31:03.880]liberty and that's because
- [00:31:05.820]it was and still is most often used by prisoners to
- [00:31:09.840]question the validity of
- [00:31:11.980]their arrest but as stated before Black Indigenous and Chinese people were at a
- [00:31:18.080]much higher risk of being unlawfully detained and restrained and so they also
- [00:31:22.360]employed the use of habeas corpus more than their white counterparts to to
- [00:31:29.140]resist all different types of detainment and
- [00:31:31.740]so yeah it became a powerful tool in
- [00:31:34.220]the 19th century to resist enslavement
- [00:31:36.300]challenged deportation reclaimed
- [00:31:38.160]children and even challenged detainment in like mental institutions okay so I'm
- [00:31:48.060]in the middle of context of the court system that these
- [00:31:50.980]Black mothers have to
- [00:31:52.180]navigate because as Kamala Harris says, "do you think you just fell out of a
- [00:31:56.360]coconut tree? you exist with all within all that came before you." So that's
- [00:32:03.220]important that we understand the legal system that they're navigating and so
- [00:32:08.060]one is the fugitive slave law of 1850 that required enslaved people to be
- [00:32:14.340]returned to their owners even if they were living in a free state at the time
- [00:32:18.500]the 1857 Dred Scott ruling which upheld slavery in the United States it denied
- [00:32:24.160]citizenship to Black Americans and that citizenship is
- [00:32:27.980]important right because
- [00:32:28.880]how a lot of people are like how are they actually
- [00:32:31.880]accessing the courts if
- [00:32:33.140]they aren't citizens and then covert your laws as well affecting women's
- [00:32:38.260]rights I think a lot of people focus on like Black people were denied all these
- [00:32:42.400]rights but also women were as well and these mothers that I studied they are
- [00:32:46.860]Black and women and so they also had to deal with culture
- [00:32:50.940]laws that said that no
- [00:32:52.360]female person had a legal identity and only had a legal identity under a
- [00:32:57.300]husband or father's rules so technically they
- [00:33:00.440]could not make contracts be sued or
- [00:33:02.560]own businesses we know this is not true from all the cases that were shared
- [00:33:07.200]today but also just you know if you read they were
- [00:33:11.620]her property by Stephanie
- [00:33:12.660]Jones Rogers that is a great book that looks at
- [00:33:14.960]white women's participation in
- [00:33:18.380]the slave trade and so yeah and then finally the aftermath
- [00:33:22.860]of the Civil War
- [00:33:23.720]as America is trying struggling to figure out how to integrate African
- [00:33:27.720]Americans as citizens politically socially and economically and so I just
- [00:33:32.580]wanted to share these things to help us all understand that like this is a very
- [00:33:37.260]messy time there's a lot going on there's a lot to navigate for these
- [00:33:40.720]Black mothers and a lot of who are poor a lot of who are enslaved or like freed
- [00:33:46.860]women and so just keep that at the forefront of your mind as we were like
- [00:33:51.440]listening to these stories so the case that I'm gonna share that that's what I
- [00:33:57.560]had to read and I I did you all a favor by darkening it for
- [00:34:01.220]you so you can read
- [00:34:03.940]it better but it's Elizabeth Lizzie Byrd versus
- [00:34:07.500]Francis Patamore Patmore
- [00:34:09.460]and so Elizabeth Byrd a free woman of color she
- [00:34:14.060]sent her ten-year-old daughter
- [00:34:15.260]Missouri to live and work for a widow white woman Francis Patmore Lizzie
- [00:34:20.380]believed that Missouri will only be with Francis for a limited time and when it
- [00:34:24.220]came time for Lizzie to be reunited with her daughter she was prevented from
- [00:34:27.760]doing so resorting to the court Lizzie through her
- [00:34:31.920]lawyer Clark O'Connor Lee
- [00:34:33.420]filed a habeas petition for her daughter Missouri where
- [00:34:36.460]she asserts that Francis
- [00:34:37.500]was keeping Missouri to quote secure and extort her services as a servant without
- [00:34:42.540]paying her for her labor in response Francis Patmore a 35 year old widow of
- [00:34:49.060]Union soldier Oscar Patmore claimed that Missouri
- [00:34:51.659]did not want to leave her home
- [00:34:53.080]because quote Lizzie mistreated and abused her Francis was not able to
- [00:34:58.960]provide any evidence to support these claims and there is no testimony from
- [00:35:02.760]Missouri but Lizzie's experiences experience
- [00:35:08.620]of being labeled unfit is
- [00:35:10.380]often representational of the thoughts of black motherhood at the time because
- [00:35:16.160]during slavery kinlessness and unfit parenting was mapped onto black mothers
- [00:35:22.280]to help justify enslavement and so kinship became something that could
- [00:35:28.460]only be claimed in freedom and usually Blackness
- [00:35:31.440]signified freedoms opposite
- [00:35:32.900]right and so black mothers held the stereotype around them that they were
- [00:35:37.500]not fit that they didn't care about their children or that kinship and
- [00:35:41.400]community wasn't important to the Black community both Lizzie and Francis
- [00:35:47.240]attempt to position themselves as the best people to care for Missouri and so
- [00:35:53.380]Lizzie uses language such as true and lawful mother or custodian which
- [00:36:00.120]demonstrates Lizzie believed her relationship
- [00:36:01.900]with her daughter to be
- [00:36:03.300]legitimate and protected under the law and she is also using language that
- [00:36:06.740]positions herself as the biological mother which she knew at the time the
- [00:36:11.600]courts put a lot of emphasis on like biological parentage whereas yeah
- [00:36:19.700]whereas Francis stresses that Lizzie was abusive and that she had been clothing
- [00:36:24.080]and taking care of the child while she lived with her so she's showing them
- [00:36:28.200]like I have taken care of her all this time I fed
- [00:36:30.780]and clothed her Elizabeth is
- [00:36:44.280]both positioning the other to be an immoral person undeserving of having
- [00:36:48.740]custody of Missouri and so in cases of child custody during the 19th century
- [00:36:53.140]this increasingly became the strategy for obtaining custody if you can prove
- [00:36:57.740]that somebody was less moral than you because emphasis
- [00:37:01.160]was placed on upbringing
- [00:37:02.460]good Republican citizens good good citizens
- [00:37:07.240]for the nation yeah and so it
- [00:37:12.780]wasn't about proving that you could just provide financially for the child
- [00:37:16.100]but also that you could provide a better moral upbringing and
- [00:37:19.260]so we don't know
- [00:37:22.180]the outcome of Lizzie's case which is unfortunate and
- [00:37:25.640]frustrating but there is
- [00:37:28.060]still so much that we can draw from her case and so for me this case reveals
- [00:37:33.000]that there is a lot of tensions over child labor coercive labor and Black
- [00:37:37.400]maternal custody during the Reconstruction Era Midwest but we also
- [00:37:42.240]can draw that fighting for the union did not necessarily mean that white
- [00:37:45.540]people believed in the equality of Black people Oscar Patmore was Francis's
- [00:37:52.780]husband so ostensibly she also agreed with the union or was pro-Union we
- [00:37:59.740]don't know but you know just because you fought for the Union does not
- [00:38:04.100]necessarily mean that you believe that Black people are equal or should be
- [00:38:07.920]equal and also people during the 19th century again are invoking a kind of
- [00:38:13.040]prototype of the best interest of the child language to get the courts to
- [00:38:17.460]decide in favor which becomes the foundation again for family law today
- [00:38:21.920]which I think it will be one of the most important parts
- [00:38:25.840]of my dissertation and
- [00:38:28.520]then finally even after the Civil War Black families face threats of
- [00:38:32.980]separation and forced labor and so while we celebrate this Juneteenth let us
- [00:38:37.720]remember that freedom liberty and respect was not given within a day and
- [00:38:42.140]it is something that African-Americans still
- [00:38:44.020]fight for and then I'll end with
- [00:38:47.120]some lingering questions that I have in case anybody was wondering it was gonna
- [00:38:50.500]ask I'm gonna let you know that I'm already thinking about it so like how
- [00:38:55.940]did Lizzie come to find Clark O'Connor her lawyer did she hear about it from
- [00:39:00.420]neighbors was he known for finding other habeas petitions was he known for being
- [00:39:05.640]involved in other child custody cases I haven't been able to figure that out
- [00:39:09.420]how does she pay him did she pay him again what kind
- [00:39:14.520]of community did Lizzie
- [00:39:15.580]have to lean on during this experience because I
- [00:39:18.000]imagine having her child
- [00:39:19.560]taken away from you is a very traumatic experience and so you know who again who
- [00:39:23.960]did she go to to feel that grief and sorrow with and
- [00:39:27.780]then what was Missouri's
- [00:39:29.300]experience like we don't have any testimony from the child herself about
- [00:39:33.080]what it was like to be taken from her mother or what
- [00:39:35.860]who she believed was best
- [00:39:37.400]fit to take care of her and so I'd like to just sit
- [00:39:40.300]and think through you know
- [00:39:41.640]what Missouri's experience was like and then finally how did Lizzie physically
- [00:39:46.220]experience the court what was it like to enter into the courtroom what was it
- [00:39:51.260]like to talk with the court reporter or the county clerk so physical space is
- [00:39:58.280]something that I hope to build into the project to help us think about the
- [00:40:02.240]courtroom as a space and so yeah that's what I want to do. Alright thank you
- [00:40:17.330]Alright thank you very much
- [00:40:18.790]we've got time for a couple of questions so. I will say for me it's about using
- [00:40:25.990]other sources to try to think about what people who
- [00:40:29.350]necessarily are my characters
- [00:40:30.850]but other people at that time would have experienced and trying to build that
- [00:40:33.850]story and imagine what it would be like I think we will never the archives will
- [00:40:39.870]never reveal like the story to us and so I think it's really unproductive to
- [00:40:43.730]just like sit in that frustration and so for me I just try to find secondary
- [00:40:48.890]sources or other primary sources that might speak to what their experience
- [00:40:52.550]would be like if that makes sense. So a lot of my trials actually do end
- [00:40:58.880]conclusively so that's a bit of a hard question for me but there is one trial
- [00:41:02.880]that I was mentioning Lewis who I'm not sure and I am having a chapter in my
- [00:41:07.580]dissertation that talks about the violence of courts so I'm talking about
- [00:41:11.420]like constant retrial is also the language they were using and not knowing
- [00:41:16.300]conclusively I'm also arguing is a type of violence just because you could not
- [00:41:20.760]know what your fate is or one court could decide that
- [00:41:22.940]you're free and then
- [00:41:23.760]also decide that you're not if the defendant comes back so kind of talking
- [00:41:28.180]about violence in that way yeah. Yeah I guess I'm cheating because I also have an end
- [00:41:37.080]and then some for the case I'm looking at yeah but I know it's rare and it took
- [00:41:42.520]me a while to get to this case and just sort of
- [00:41:45.640]related to Hannah so therefore
- [00:41:47.740]my dissertation question isn't so much about ends or like singular dates and
- [00:41:52.220]singular instances but thinking about legal
- [00:41:54.440]process and what happens in legal
- [00:41:58.500]cases like the they aren't solved instantaneously even when there are
- [00:42:03.020]conclusive outcomes and sometimes even a conclusive outcome isn't the end of
- [00:42:07.460]the story so while John Roach was his case concludes concluded with his
- [00:42:13.400]freedom affirmed I learned that he ended up indebted
- [00:42:16.580]and potentially incarcerated
- [00:42:18.180]a few years later so getting on I mean it's I think it's good to be
- [00:42:24.640]uncomfortable with history sometimes healthy to be uncomfortable sometimes
- [00:42:30.280]that's where a lot of learning happens and obviously I like to learn I'm in a
- [00:42:35.480]PhD program so yeah. Got one down front here yeah so
- [00:42:40.680]for everybody's benefit the
- [00:42:42.000]question is about Judy suing a pastor and the relationship raising this
- [00:42:47.040]question about what's the relationship between slavery and freedom suits and
- [00:42:51.280]religion? That's such a good question thank you for that um I am focusing on
- [00:42:57.520]slavery and religion a little bit but because I have so much information about
- [00:43:01.200]these single people I'm also focusing kind of on meet him as a person in
- [00:43:05.940]general because he is fascinating he was a Black slave owner he was enslaved and
- [00:43:10.120]then bought his freedom and then enslaved 20 people and the idea was
- [00:43:15.340]like oh I'm enslaving them so they can work towards their
- [00:43:17.980]freedom and it's like
- [00:43:19.400]well okay three people also sued you so that I don't know how much that worked
- [00:43:23.120]but so he's a really fascinating character as I said he was the founder
- [00:43:27.780]of the first Black Baptist Church his wife might have been an abolitionist so
- [00:43:32.200]I'm trying to figure out what was happening in that family but yeah no I
- [00:43:36.740]am really interested in teasing out the relationship between religion and
- [00:43:40.460]slavery I'm also looking at the Catholic Church and
- [00:43:42.860]seeing how they related
- [00:43:43.700]that's what one of my chapters is about so hopefully I'll
- [00:43:46.480]have more answers for
- [00:43:47.260]you when I finish writing but yeah. One last question yeah. I was just gonna ask
- [00:43:56.180]if while reading through any of these legal documents if you've seen any ways
- [00:44:01.200]that like legal information has was like potentially spreading
- [00:44:04.960]through the Black
- [00:44:05.740]community and how they might learn about like some of these legal avenues that
- [00:44:08.480]they're using to fight for their freedom or
- [00:44:11.000]any of the such. For me I've been
- [00:44:17.860]looking at Black periodicals and like newspapers magazines things like that I
- [00:44:24.060]know in the Christian recorder they spoke a lot about like Black motherhood
- [00:44:28.360]and so I have an inkling that that is where a lot of the conversation is
- [00:44:32.560]happening but I also know that usually in like
- [00:44:36.080]barbershops and public spaces
- [00:44:38.240]there's also a lot of conversation happening and I think one of the
- [00:44:41.500]tensions of my dissertation is trying to figure out how much I should reveal
- [00:44:46.120]about their communities where they share information right because it's
- [00:44:51.740]hidden for a reason as a survival strategy and so I'm just really thinking
- [00:44:55.040]about is it ethical to reveal that or not and so yeah. Yeah so that's also
- [00:45:04.700]that's a hard question so the family's lawyer was
- [00:45:11.600]a prominent freedom suit
- [00:45:12.700]lawyer so I'm like that is probably everyone knew also it well not everyone
- [00:45:17.940]but a lot of people probably knew also interestingly enough at the same time
- [00:45:23.080]that Judy is suing for her freedom there is another enslaved woman named Judy
- [00:45:27.140]who I got very confused with her but they're not the same person her name is
- [00:45:30.520]Judy alias Julia Logan and she's also suing John Barry Meacham for freedom so
- [00:45:36.800]I'm like they might have been talking since they had the same enslaver and I
- [00:45:40.280]don't really know if it's a coincidence that they were suing at basically almost
- [00:45:43.180]the exact same time so possibly those informal
- [00:45:46.580]communication networks I'm
- [00:45:48.140]thinking as well. Yeah I mean I've nothing is definitive right in the sort
- [00:45:54.910]like nothing says John Roach has a diary and he learned it from this other Black
- [00:46:00.090]person unfortunately but similarly people other
- [00:46:04.950]people who the Romans claimed as
- [00:46:06.590]slaves file freedom suits around the same times but also their runaway
- [00:46:11.370]advertisements saying that people that they
- [00:46:14.810]claimed the slaves were fleeing so
- [00:46:16.570]I imagine it's a group effort and I think that's something that stood out
- [00:46:21.270]even though I only talked about one person I think all of us are dealing
- [00:46:24.570]with communities sometimes families in a sort of more biological sense but also
- [00:46:29.670]just like kin networks that don't necessarily appear and like the one
- [00:46:33.010]named plaintiff but there's a whole community supporting these trials so
- [00:46:39.350]that's a good question. All right all right thank you very much Charlene do
- [00:46:44.890]you have anything to wrap up? I just want to say thank
- [00:46:51.680]you again for your research
- [00:46:53.700]thank you for the Digital Legal Research Lab and this program and thank you for
- [00:46:59.620]all coming thank my colleagues especially Regina, Joni, and Erin for
- [00:47:05.760]their help in doing this so one more round of applause.
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- Tags:
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