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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47
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Description
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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- [00:00:00.000]Hi everybody, I'm Will Thomas, I'm the angle chair in the humanities and a professor of
- [00:00:15.000]history here at the University of Nebraska and it's my great pleasure also to be the
- [00:00:21.040]director of and a co-PI with Professor Jagodinsky and Professor Jeanette Jones of a Mellon-funded
- [00:00:29.240]initiative, that's Mellon Foundation-funded initiative here at the University of Nebraska
- [00:00:34.880]on U.S. law and race.
- [00:00:38.560]And so we received this grant a year ago, we're one year into a three and a half year
- [00:00:44.980]funded program and it's a collaboration between the Department of History and the College
- [00:00:51.360]of Law here at Nebraska and the University Libraries, especially the Center for Digital
- [00:00:56.980]Research in the Humanities.
- [00:00:58.480]A key partner on this project and as you just heard from Professor Jagodinsky, we are developing
- [00:01:06.920]a collaboratively built open educational resource that will be available to anyone
- [00:01:12.760]in the United States, anyone in the world of materials, the cases you just heard about,
- [00:01:21.420]to teach U.S. law and race and the history of law and race in the United States.
- [00:01:27.720]So, we're locating and we're making accessible and we're documenting the history of U.S.
- [00:01:36.120]law in relation to race.
- [00:01:38.580]And this is a project that includes a lot of different components.
- [00:01:44.400]The open educational resource that will be available is one of them.
- [00:01:48.820]A series of courses here at the University of Nebraska is another major component of
- [00:01:54.880]what we're doing.
- [00:01:56.240]We have a new freshman course.
- [00:01:56.960]It's called "And Justice for All," where we cover the development of U.S. legal history,
- [00:02:05.000]especially with relationship to race, from the colonial period to present.
- [00:02:10.200]And some of the stories that you've just heard about are in that curriculum.
- [00:02:15.440]We are also working with community partners to encourage storytelling from descendants
- [00:02:22.320]and those who have been affected by this history.
- [00:02:26.200]And one of the two principal partners are Vision Maker Media right here in Lincoln, Nebraska.
- [00:02:31.680]Indigenous filmmakers who are going to contribute media and documentary films to this large collective project.
- [00:02:39.680]And the other is the Institute for Politics, Policy and History at the University of the District of Columbia in Washington, D.C.
- [00:02:47.680]And they are contributing stories to this project.
- [00:02:52.680]Well, it's my pleasure to introduce our three graduate students,
- [00:02:55.680]who are with us today.
- [00:02:57.680]They are Mellon graduate fellows.
- [00:03:01.680]They applied to this program.
- [00:03:03.680]It's a three-week program here at the Digital Legal Research Lab with us.
- [00:03:08.680]And the intent is for this fellowship to encourage and develop their research on U.S. law and race.
- [00:03:18.680]And so you're going to hear from each one of them about their research,
- [00:03:22.680]the advanced state of work that they're undertaking,
- [00:03:25.160]and the contributions that they're making.
- [00:03:28.640]And so I think we're going to go in chronological order.
- [00:03:32.640]And we are in chronological -- look at that.
- [00:03:34.640]Taneil Ruffin from Princeton University will start.
- [00:03:38.640]And then Hannah Simmons from Northwestern University will follow.
- [00:03:42.640]And then Kasha Appleton from Indiana University will conclude.
- [00:03:45.640]And so you need a mic. Do you have a mic?
- [00:03:48.640]Okay, right there. All right. So, Taneil, please.
- [00:03:50.640]Hello. Oh, great.
- [00:03:52.640]Hi, everyone. Thank you all for being here.
- [00:03:54.640]I'm Taneil. I go to Princeton, usually.
- [00:03:56.640]I'm getting my Ph.D.
- [00:03:58.640]I'm typically there. Right now I'm here.
- [00:04:00.640]I'm getting my Ph.D. in history and I'm also a certificate student in African-American studies at Princeton.
- [00:04:09.640]I don't need to wax poetic like I was going to do about how great it's been to be here.
- [00:04:14.640]Obviously, I learned so much from the undergrads.
- [00:04:16.640]I learned so much from Dr. Jagodinsky and Dr. Thomas and Dr. Jones in the, like, days that we've been here.
- [00:04:22.640]So I'm going to try to give an approach.
- [00:04:24.120]I'm going to try to give an abridged presentation of my already abridged presentation about my dissertation.
- [00:04:29.120]And if you have questions, I'm very happy to continue to talk more.
- [00:04:34.120]So today I'm just going to give you a snapshot of a life of a free African-American boy, a part of his young adulthood.
- [00:04:43.120]His name was John Roach.
- [00:04:45.120]I first learned about John Roach through his 1817 freedom suit.
- [00:04:49.120]But I later found documents that were able to reveal a bit more about his life.
- [00:04:53.600]Even after the suit.
- [00:04:55.600]And like some people mentioned, it's hard to follow a lot of these people.
- [00:04:59.600]Sometimes even the case alone doesn't tell us too much.
- [00:05:03.600]And definitely not with certainty about people's experiences.
- [00:05:07.600]But honestly, it's taken me like all of this academic year to get a lot of what you see on the screen.
- [00:05:13.600]Yeah.
- [00:05:15.600]A lot of what you see on the screen.
- [00:05:17.600]It was reorganized from when I put it together.
- [00:05:19.600]So, yes.
- [00:05:21.600]Okay.
- [00:05:23.080]So, I'll start with the freedom suit, which is part of it is over here on your right.
- [00:05:28.080]And then I'm going to end with the big payment order.
- [00:05:32.080]And there's like five years in between there.
- [00:05:34.080]So, I'm going to try to go quickly between that.
- [00:05:36.080]And let me know when I'm -- thank you.
- [00:05:40.080]All right.
- [00:05:42.080]John Roach was about 19 years old when he petitioned the first district court of New Orleans for his freedom in February of 1817.
- [00:05:50.080]Despite being born free in Philadelphia, which is also my hometown.
- [00:05:52.560]John Roach claimed that a man referred to in these documents as Jay Holland was detaining him in the city jail.
- [00:06:00.560]When I first came across the suit, I knew it was a freedom suit and I knew the outcome of the suit because I had encountered it through a database.
- [00:06:08.560]Much like what you all are working on now.
- [00:06:11.560]It started, I think, before I was born, though.
- [00:06:14.560]But a database that a few scholars had done the work of finding these petitions, scanning them, uploading them, and they didn't transcribe this.
- [00:06:22.040]They transcribed these documents like you all are doing, but they did write some summaries of the cases.
- [00:06:27.040]And I'm super fortunate for that because this is what I'm supposed to be able to read to tell all that information from.
- [00:06:36.040]It took me up until, like, two days ago, and I've been sitting with this case for months now to understand what's going on in these pages.
- [00:06:46.040]So the work that you all are doing is allowing me to -- and will allow future scholars to be able to ask,
- [00:06:51.520]new, exciting questions about the history of race and law, so thank you in advance for all the work that you're doing.
- [00:06:58.520]And so, because I couldn't really make out the outcome of this suit on the document itself,
- [00:07:06.520]I went to the sort of middle pages, and I learned a lot of really interesting things in the few middle pages that we have from this suit.
- [00:07:15.520]And I'm going to highlight two interesting and surprising ones now.
- [00:07:21.000]So one of the things that jumped out to me as I was reading John Roach's initial petition was that he asked the judge to order Holland to allow Roach to work while his suit was pending.
- [00:07:34.000]And that Holland hold on to any wages that Roach earned from his work during the freedom suit.
- [00:07:40.000]And lastly, to prohibit Roach from giving or selling him to another person while his suit was pending.
- [00:07:48.000]And the judge ends up granting this request.
- [00:07:50.480]And eventually I learned that's some of what the left half of the page on the screen says.
- [00:07:55.480]And so a petitioner asking for a petition to do work during the suit was something that I had never really thought of or had come across in my reading of other historians' accounts about freedom suits.
- [00:08:06.480]And I also thought it was interesting that the person that was being tasked with, like, safekeeping John Roach and any money that he had earned was the person that he was suing, Jay Holland.
- [00:08:19.960]And it's because Jay Holland was the sheriff of this parish, of this area.
- [00:08:26.760]But I learned that after more research.
- [00:08:28.320]That wasn't readily apparent in the court documents.
- [00:08:31.340]And so I had to turn to the Louisiana Code of Civil Procedure from 1856.
- [00:08:36.980]That's not something I would usually do.
- [00:08:40.040]It's not something I thought I would do, ever.
- [00:08:42.100]And so I learned that although Roach wasn't using the exact language of what's in the
- [00:08:46.660]Code of Civil Procedure, Roach and his lawyer were asking for
- [00:08:49.820]a judicial sequestration, which is language that's in the Code of Civil Procedure.
- [00:08:55.600]And according to that, someone could ask the sheriff, and I'm going to quote here, to take
- [00:09:01.560]in his possession and keep a thing of which another person has the possession until after
- [00:09:06.520]the decision of the suit.
- [00:09:09.000]So this accounts in my read for what Roach was doing in the freedom suit.
- [00:09:14.600]He wanted judicial sequestration, and this is something that I'm still trying to
- [00:09:19.680]understand in the dissertation project.
- [00:09:22.800]For me, the fact that Roach asked to be hired out and sequestered situates him in what I'm
- [00:09:28.680]thinking of as legal limbo.
- [00:09:31.020]Yep, that's up there.
- [00:09:32.920]So he's not treated completely as a free person during his suit.
- [00:09:37.140]According to civil procedure, judges order that things or property are sequestered.
- [00:09:41.520]So he's consenting or Roach is consenting to being thought of as a thing, property,
- [00:09:46.980]to be sequestered.
- [00:09:48.540]However.
- [00:09:49.540]The fact that he has to work on his own and potentially claim those wages as his own is
- [00:09:55.440]not something that we think someone who has the status of a slave would be able to do.
- [00:09:59.880]So he's kind of existing in between being a thing, a property, slave, but also he's
- [00:10:06.320]able to potentially earn his own money.
- [00:10:08.540]So it's sort of unclear and I'm still trying to think through what that meant in his life
- [00:10:13.980]and what that might mean for law.
- [00:10:18.440]Another thing.
- [00:10:19.400]Another flag is, like I mentioned, John Roach is from Philadelphia.
- [00:10:23.900]And I was curious about how he came to be from Philadelphia in the early 19th century
- [00:10:28.880]to Louisiana.
- [00:10:31.320]And unsurprisingly that's disputed in the depositions in the case.
- [00:10:35.160]So Roach himself said that he had been illegally enslaved for ten months on a sugar plantation
- [00:10:39.680]about 50 miles west of New Orleans by members of a super powerful family called the Roman
- [00:10:44.520]family.
- [00:10:46.160]The plantation that they owned is like now a historic site.
- [00:10:49.260]Well, it's starting to become a historic site.
- [00:10:53.360]It's a tourist site right now, too.
- [00:10:55.020]And it's super interesting.
- [00:10:58.020]But after the ten months that Roach labored on the plantation, he was brought to the New
- [00:11:03.080]Orleans jail as a runaway slave, allegedly.
- [00:11:06.720]And in the jail, he found or he met this man that he claimed knew him back in Philadelphia.
- [00:11:13.320]He was a sailor.
- [00:11:14.500]And it turns out that when John Roach was much younger, he lived near the docks.
- [00:11:19.120]In Philadelphia.
- [00:11:20.700]Which are pictured behind my head up here.
- [00:11:24.220]And his mother was like a washerwoman for a lot of the crews on these ships that would
- [00:11:29.240]dock in Philadelphia.
- [00:11:30.640]So John would carry dirty clothes from the ship to his mother's house.
- [00:11:34.580]His mom would wash them.
- [00:11:35.980]And then he'd take them back to the ship.
- [00:11:37.620]And so that's how he just happened to know this white sailor who ends up in the jail
- [00:11:42.020]where Roach is detained as a fugitive slave at the moment when he launches his freedom
- [00:11:48.180]suit.
- [00:11:48.980]Which still doesn't really answer how he gets from Philadelphia to New Orleans.
- [00:11:55.220]But I'm sort of speculating along with this sailor.
- [00:11:59.760]The sailor says that John Roach probably left to find work.
- [00:12:03.580]Which seemed odd to me that someone would leave Philadelphia in the early 19th century.
- [00:12:07.340]This is a place where slavery has gradually been abolished at this point.
- [00:12:13.060]It's home to a free Black community.
- [00:12:15.300]There are like abolitionist organizations.
- [00:12:17.840]Anti-racist organizations.
- [00:12:18.840]And movements at this point.
- [00:12:21.120]Why would a teenager have to leave a city like this to find work?
- [00:12:26.500]I still don't know all the answers to that.
- [00:12:28.580]But it's something that I'm exploring.
- [00:12:30.220]And the reason I bring it up today is because I think it sort of resonates with this issue
- [00:12:34.440]that some of the students brought up and what Juneteenth commemorates about the issues of
- [00:12:38.960]geography and the importance of place when we talk about slavery and freedom.
- [00:12:42.700]And so while we might think often scholars and popular audiences might think of Philadelphia
- [00:12:47.700]and Pennsylvania.
- [00:12:48.700]As the antebellum North in general as free soil and therefore a safe haven for African
- [00:12:54.200]Americans during this period.
- [00:12:55.460]I have found evidence that African Americans like John Roach willingly left the city.
- [00:13:01.940]Sometimes went to New Orleans to indenture themselves.
- [00:13:04.400]So to learn a trade.
- [00:13:05.720]To have like more lucrative careers for themselves later in life.
- [00:13:11.200]So one more document and then I'll wrap up.
- [00:13:15.520]So John ends up winning his suit.
- [00:13:18.560]About nine months after the initial filing.
- [00:13:23.780]And that's usually where the trail ends.
- [00:13:25.460]But not for me.
- [00:13:26.460]I just run a search again of his name.
- [00:13:29.180]And I was able to find another case that he participated in.
- [00:13:32.680]In this case, he is the defendant this time.
- [00:13:35.280]Not the plaintiff.
- [00:13:37.820]And he's being sued for $150 plus interest.
- [00:13:41.060]Because apparently during his suit, he asked someone for a loan to help cover the expenses
- [00:13:46.280]that he incurred during the suit.
- [00:13:48.420]And he agreed to repay the loan by indenturing himself.
- [00:13:51.280]So working for this person for 18 months.
- [00:13:54.400]Obviously, we have the court records.
- [00:13:56.240]So he didn't do that.
- [00:13:58.400]And so the judge decides that John Roach has to repay these people $150 with interest.
- [00:14:04.900]And truly the last document this time.
- [00:14:06.960]Turns out he doesn't do that either or I suspect that he doesn't do that either.
- [00:14:10.600]Because like three days ago, I found this promissory note from the mayor of New Orleans.
- [00:14:18.280]The same person that John Roach sued five years earlier and the mayor is agreeing to
- [00:14:24.000]pay Jay Holland for the labor of four Black people who work on the chain gang.
- [00:14:28.880]One of them is a Jay Roach.
- [00:14:30.880]And so, okay.
- [00:14:32.980]You all are having a great reaction to me.
- [00:14:35.160]I'm like, I think it's him.
- [00:14:38.220]I can't say for sure if it is him.
- [00:14:41.300]But I will suggest to this audience that seems to agree with me that it's likely that this
- [00:14:46.100]Jay Roach is the same Jay Roach.
- [00:14:48.140]That I started with the document says that this Roach worked 108 days between July 3rd
- [00:14:54.460]of 1822 to December 3rd of 1822.
- [00:14:57.320]The work that he performed was worth $27.
- [00:15:01.080]But this $27 goes back to Holland.
- [00:15:03.380]It's not going to Roach.
- [00:15:05.560]And so I'll leave you with that.
- [00:15:07.960]Because that's also kind of what I'm left with.
- [00:15:10.020]Starting this story of a successful freedom suit.
- [00:15:12.960]The court did affirm Roach's freedom in 1817.
- [00:15:16.580]But we're going to stop.
- [00:15:18.000]In 1822, where he's back in a situation of unfreedom with the person he sued to begin
- [00:15:24.960]with.
- [00:15:25.960]So thank you.
- [00:15:30.960]Hello, everyone.
- [00:15:37.440]My name is Hannah Simmons, as it says up there.
- [00:15:39.920]I am a fourth year Ph.D. student at Northwestern in the history department.
- [00:15:43.600]I'm also getting my certificate at Northwestern in gender and sexuality studies.
- [00:15:47.860]Yeah, so I'm really happy to be here.
- [00:15:50.540]I'm really excited to tell you more about my research.
- [00:15:52.940]Just also wanted to say the undergrads, you all did an amazing job.
- [00:15:55.480]And I'm so happy that you all went first because I'm going to talk about freedom suits and
- [00:15:58.640]typically I have to explain what that is, but you all did that so I get to cut something
- [00:16:02.160]out of my presentation.
- [00:16:03.380]So thank you.
- [00:16:04.380]Okay.
- [00:16:05.380]So as I said, I centralized freedom suits.
- [00:16:08.220]So my work looks at the freedom suits of a woman named Judy, her daughters Celeste and
- [00:16:13.260]Espisa, and her grandchildren, Andrew, Lewis, and Celestine.
- [00:16:17.100]So when I was thinking about freedom suits.
- [00:16:17.720]Thinking about how to prepare for this presentation, I decided that the best way to convey my research
- [00:16:22.680]was in a narrative form.
- [00:16:24.600]Both because this is how I plan to write my dissertation and because I believe that one
- [00:16:28.280]of the goals of a freedom suit is to create a compelling narrative with a strong argument.
- [00:16:34.000]So I've divided this presentation into four stories centralizing the family at the heart
- [00:16:38.920]of my research.
- [00:16:40.180]The first two narratives focus primarily on Judy.
- [00:16:43.460]The last two focus on her descendants.
- [00:16:46.320]After each narrative.
- [00:16:47.580]I will give a breakdown of what I have told you all and how it relates to the greater
- [00:16:51.560]themes of my work.
- [00:16:53.500]The following is narrative one, which is drawn from the first two slides on -- yeah, the
- [00:17:00.620]first two -- sorry, the first two images on the slide.
- [00:17:03.960]So here we go.
- [00:17:05.860]On January 9, 1837, Judy stood in the St. Louis county circuit court and dipped her
- [00:17:11.460]quill into a pot of black ink, carefully fixing her mark on a light brown piece of parchment.
- [00:17:17.440]She might have breathed a small sigh of relief as the court clerk, John Ruland, took the paper
- [00:17:23.000]from her and folded it carefully before putting it in his coat.
- [00:17:27.040]Although it was only two pages, the documents had the potential to change not only her life
- [00:17:31.440]but the lives of her family members as well.
- [00:17:34.700]Because just a few moments ago, Judy had signed a petition to sue her master, a free Black
- [00:17:39.380]man named John Barry Meacham, for illegally holding her as a slave.
- [00:17:44.400]At the time, she was about 51 years old.
- [00:17:47.300]Seven different men had owned her and moved her across slave and free territories.
- [00:17:50.920]Let me say that again, seven different men had owned her and moved her across slave and
- [00:17:55.160]free territories.
- [00:17:57.240]On its own, Judy's case allows one to see the overlap between the law and movement across
- [00:18:01.780]slave and free territories.
- [00:18:03.360]However, Judy's case did not stand alone.
- [00:18:06.540]On January 7th and January 9th, 1837, Judy stood in a courtroom five times, citing her
- [00:18:12.040]mark on the freedom suits of her daughters, Celeste and Espisa, and her grandchildren,
- [00:18:16.640]Andrew, Lewis, and Celeste.
- [00:18:17.160]So from January 7th, 1837, to May 29th, 1843, Judy, who I said was 51, Celeste, 34, Espisa,
- [00:18:29.460]30, Andrew, 16, Lewis, who we don't know the age of, and Celestine, who I just found out
- [00:18:34.380]was one year old.
- [00:18:35.240]And I kind of love that because I have the image of Judy bringing in her grandchild,
- [00:18:41.480]like carrying her, into the courtroom so she can sue for her freedom.
- [00:18:45.140]So they all went into the St.
- [00:18:47.080]Louis and St.
- [00:18:47.760]Charles County Circuit Court.
- [00:18:49.180]Some of them were coming together and some by themselves, but each time they entered
- [00:18:53.300]the court to, as I said, establish their freedom.
- [00:18:55.680]In the end, despite retrials, witness and defendant absences, and distance, Judy, Celeste,
- [00:19:01.480]Espisa, Andrew, and Celestine all won their freedom.
- [00:19:04.100]It's possible that Louis also did, but I haven't found anything to confirm that yet.
- [00:19:08.680]The family's engagement with the legal system shows that they understood that the same legal
- [00:19:15.020]system that justified their freedom.
- [00:19:17.020]Sorry, their enslavement also justified their freedom.
- [00:19:19.980]So rather than viewing the family's lawsuits as remarkable, my research is part of a growing
- [00:19:27.440]body of scholarship, which you all are doing as well, that shows enslaved people's legal
- [00:19:31.560]savvy.
- [00:19:31.900]Using Judy and her family's freedom suits, my dissertation argues that through Judy and
- [00:19:37.240]her family's cases, one can see how motherhood, the evolution of the local and national legal
- [00:19:41.820]systems, the overlap between slave and free states and territories in the Old Northwest,
- [00:19:46.980]and physical and verbal movement allowed enslaved people to sue for their freedom.
- [00:19:51.180]To do this, I build on scholarships centralizing enslaved motherhood, legal history of enslavement,
- [00:19:58.680]and Black legal history.
- [00:19:59.800]However, in the interest of time, I'm going to focus primarily on the place of freedom
- [00:20:03.780]suits and the legal history of slavery and motherhood.
- [00:20:06.980]To claim their freedom, Judy and her family relied on the second narrative I'm reconstructing
- [00:20:12.680]for this presentation, which I call Judy's background narrative.
- [00:20:15.940]So, Judy was born in Virginia in 1786.
- [00:20:21.220]When she was about 10 or 11 years old, an unnamed person sold her to Peter Macy, who
- [00:20:26.040]then brought her to Louisville, Kentucky.
- [00:20:28.860]While Kentucky had only become a state in 1792, when Judy arrived in the early 1800s,
- [00:20:34.700]Kentucky already had a large slave population of 40,343 people out of 220,959 people.
- [00:20:45.620]Even Louisville, one of the smallest towns at the time, had a slave population that outnumbered
- [00:20:49.540]its white population.
- [00:20:52.000]Later a portion of the slave population, Judy included, became part of the established trade
- [00:20:56.500]from Louisville, Kentucky to Vincennes, Indiana.
- [00:21:00.000]When Judy was in her mid-teens, Macy sold her to a certain William Sullivan, who kept
- [00:21:05.020]her for a short time, about one or two years as a slave.
- [00:21:09.360]In 1799, a certain Robert Bunton, a resident of the town of Vincennes and this northwestern
- [00:21:15.300]territory, came to Louisville to purchase Judy from Sullivan.
- [00:21:19.440]Sullivan then received the sum of $250 for the sale.
- [00:21:24.860]When Bunton brought Judy to Vincennes, she was large, tall, and heavy, as the records
- [00:21:29.380]say, perhaps weighing 150 or 160 pounds.
- [00:21:32.960]I don't know how the records know that, but that is what they said.
- [00:21:36.960]She stayed in Vincennes for two years or upwards.
- [00:21:40.220]According to the opening statement of all of Judy's children and grandchildren's cases,
- [00:21:43.860]Bunton held and treated her.
- [00:21:44.980]Bunton then sold her to Toussaint Du Bois and brought her to Kaskaskia, then sold her
- [00:21:51.440]to Pierre Menard.
- [00:21:53.060]Sometime between the year 1793 and 1804, Menard sold a little Black girl named Judy to William
- [00:22:01.140]Herbert Lecomte in St. Louis for $400 cash and sold her as a slave for life.
- [00:22:09.920]While there is no indication of when and under what circumstances John Barry Meacham, a Black
- [00:22:14.660]pastor and founder of the first Black Baptist church in St. Louis, became Judy's enslaver,
- [00:22:20.320]on January 9th, 1837, Judy sued him for her freedom.
- [00:22:25.060]So as you can see, Judy's narrative is rich in these textual details and fuller than I
- [00:22:28.740]have time to get into, but what I want to point out is the two legal complexities in
- [00:22:33.220]Judy's and her family's cases.
- [00:22:35.360]The first and most obvious one is enslavers and slave traffickers were obviously disregarding
- [00:22:41.180]the Article 6 of the Northwestern Court.
- [00:22:44.340]The Northwest Ordinance.
- [00:22:46.640]This article ordained that there would be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude
- [00:22:50.680]in the Northwest Territory.
- [00:22:52.780]Judy was obviously enslaved in the territory and sold as an enslaved person out of the
- [00:22:57.100]territory and spent the majority of her life in St. Louis as an enslaved person.
- [00:23:02.340]My dissertation is interrogating this disregard to argue that rather than viewing the Northwest
- [00:23:06.940]Territory as a free space, it is more accurate to look at the Northwest Territory as a slave
- [00:23:13.020]zone.
- [00:23:14.020]One point my dissertation makes is that the family used the legal system to render their
- [00:23:18.820]pursuit of generational freedom legible in the eyes of the court.
- [00:23:23.400]So what do we make of the freedom suits of Judy's daughters and grandchildren who claimed
- [00:23:28.120]their right to establish or recover their freedom, though they had spent their entire
- [00:23:32.440]lives in St. Louis?
- [00:23:35.700]Beginning their cases with an abridged version of Judy's narrative and stating their relationship
- [00:23:40.360]indicates that they understood that to collectively establish their rights to freedom,
- [00:23:44.580]they relied on enslaved motherhood or the legal understanding of it, part of stucco der Ventrum.
- [00:23:50.700]So often when people think about enslaved motherhood, they centralize part of stucco der Ventrum,
- [00:23:56.160]which was a Virginia law established in 1662 that definitively codified hereditary slavery
- [00:24:02.840]by solidifying the idea that children would inherit their mother's status.
- [00:24:08.160]This is evident not only in Judy's move to establish her children's and grandchildren's freedom,
- [00:24:13.020]but also in Celeste's pursuit of her children's freedom.
- [00:24:16.560]So that brings me to my third narrative.
- [00:24:19.300]On September 12, 1838, John Rowland, clerk of the St. Louis Circuit Court wrote,
- [00:24:27.160]"Celeste, a woman of color, for herself and on behalf of her infant child Celestine,
- [00:24:32.500]respectfully showeth that she and her said child have separate suits of freedom,
- [00:24:37.960]pending in said court against Alexander Papon."
- [00:24:41.880]She states that herself and child have these cases once submitted to a jury who did not
- [00:24:47.080]agree.
- [00:24:48.080]In other words, although Celeste's and Celestine's cases both appeared on January 9th, 1837,
- [00:24:55.140]by September 12th, 1838, they were still not free.
- [00:24:59.560]It also shows that up until that same date, Celeste's and Celestine's cases were separate.
- [00:25:04.540]Although there was never a note in the court that stated that Celeste
- [00:25:07.760]was incorporating Celestine's case into her own, Celeste claimed that she is informed
- [00:25:13.140]that the testimony before the jury was in law strong and conclusive and in favor of
- [00:25:18.020]their freedom.
- [00:25:19.720]However, Celeste states that she has come to believe that neither she nor her child
- [00:25:25.180]can receive a fair trial in St. Louis County, so she asks for the court to submit the case
- [00:25:30.240]to St. Charles County Court.
- [00:25:34.320]So I argue that while Judy's presence in Celeste's case is
- [00:25:37.560]central, Celeste's mark indicates that at some point, Celeste began to take her mother's
- [00:25:41.980]legacy of suing not only for her freedom, but also suing for the freedom of her child.
- [00:25:47.260]Which brings me to one of my favorite points across all of the cases.
- [00:25:52.340]It's also the fourth narrative, and I just have to end with this one.
- [00:25:56.160]So on May 10, 1839, Juddwell C. Powell, clerk of the St. Charles County Circuit Court, wrote,
- [00:26:03.880]"Therefore, it is considered by the court that the said plaintiff,
- [00:26:07.360]Celeste, be emancipated forever and set free of all claims of said Alexander Popone, defendant,
- [00:26:14.260]and all claiming by, through, or under him."
- [00:26:17.900]So while Celeste, the last time we saw her as appearing as an enslaved person, she was
- [00:26:22.920]then obviously granted her freedom, and the next time we see Celeste, on June 25, 1839,
- [00:26:30.020]she returned as a free woman asking for $1,000 in damages. Although she did
- [00:26:37.160]lose this suit, her reappearance showed that she was obviously enjoying her rights to freedom.
- [00:26:42.700]Furthermore, while it is not specified, Celeste possibly sued for damage not only as an act
- [00:26:48.900]of enjoying her freedom, but also to purchase her son, Louis, since around the same time
- [00:26:54.120]she was suing for damages, she was also bringing Louis' freedom suit to court.
- [00:26:59.400]Whether or not she was suing for damages to purchase her son, one can see that she
- [00:27:03.120]continued her mother's legacy of establishing her children's freedom through
- [00:27:06.960]the court system. So again, for the sake of time, I am only showing a portion of
- [00:27:12.180]the family's freedom suits. There are about 300 pages altogether of freedom
- [00:27:16.080]suits alone, so if you all have any questions, I would be happy to answer
- [00:27:19.740]them. But yeah, that's what I have for you all. Thank you for listening.
- [00:27:23.700]Thank you, Hannah.
- [00:27:26.500]So yeah, we'll go to Kasha, and then we'll have a few minutes at the end for
- [00:27:36.760]questions for our graduate students. Kasha? I'll keep it short. So my name is
- [00:27:43.120]Kasha Appleton. I am a history Ph.D. student as well at Indiana University in
- [00:27:47.860]Bloomington. I have not written my dissertation proposal yet, so I'm throwing
- [00:27:52.520]ideas of what I hope to do at you, so please bear in mind that these are all
- [00:27:57.540]aspirations. So my dissertation research looks at
- [00:28:02.920]mid-19th century Midwest Black mothers and their legal
- [00:28:06.560]strategies to gain custody of their children from abusive spouses and
- [00:28:11.020]employers, and I focus specifically on their use of habeas corpus, we've heard
- [00:28:16.780]that term come up a lot, as a legal strategy, and I have to, I always start my
- [00:28:22.800]presentations off by saying, like, six years ago I was in the same position as
- [00:28:27.120]these undergrads working with Dr. Jagodinsky transcribing 19th century
- [00:28:31.240]habeas petitions, so I feel your pain about transcribing them, but also
- [00:28:36.360]this is where I found my dissertation topic, and so I had to create a board
- [00:28:42.480]poster to present, and it was mostly on child custody and habeas corpus, like,
- [00:28:49.420]more largely, and I focused on Washington and Missouri, but as I got more into my
- [00:28:56.980]program, I realized I care about Black mothers, I care about Black women, and so
- [00:29:02.280]I narrowed down, and I'm very happy with my topic.
- [00:29:06.160]And so I thought I would just share, like, one case from my research and kind of
- [00:29:10.660]talk about what I am drawing from that case. But yeah, so not only am I
- [00:29:17.440]interested in the Black mother's use in their legal strategies, but also how they
- [00:29:21.820]utilize a prototype of this, like, best interest of the child language that is
- [00:29:27.040]foundational to family law today. Today we use, like, best interest of the
- [00:29:31.540]child to determine child custody, and in these cases I'm seeing that
- [00:29:35.960]these mothers are positioning themselves as the child's best
- [00:29:40.040]interest, and so I would like to argue that they are, you know, ushering this in.
- [00:29:45.640]And then also I'm really interested in thinking about what kind of community
- [00:29:49.660]ties these mothers had to help them navigate the courts. What type of
- [00:29:53.900]community did they have immediately after their child was taken from them?
- [00:29:59.000]Who would they first go to? You know, who shared in their sorrows? Who helped
- [00:30:04.020]them plan these strategies?
- [00:30:05.760]So I'm really interested in thinking about their networks of navigation and
- [00:30:10.980]community. So I will start with a brief definition of habeas because I always
- [00:30:17.040]need it for myself. So in its plainest terms, habeas is a recourse that protects
- [00:30:23.820]people from unlawful detainment. At the bare bones, that's what it is. And it was
- [00:30:27.780]brought over from England's common law and so it was to protect people from the
- [00:30:32.280]power of the King's Council and the King's Court.
- [00:30:35.560]And so it requires captors to present prisoners or people detained to a judge
- [00:30:41.740]so that the judge can decide upon that legality of detainment. And so this was
- [00:30:48.580]often done to ensure that jailers were operating under the official authority
- [00:30:53.060]of the courts when arresting and restraining people. And some scholars,
- [00:30:57.720]legal scholars, refer to habeas as the most important, this is a quote,
- [00:31:02.000]the most important safeguard of personal liberty. And
- [00:31:05.360]that's because it was and still is most often used by prisoners to question the
- [00:31:10.900]validity of their arrest. But as stated before, Black, Indigenous, and Chinese
- [00:31:16.740]people were at a much higher risk of being unlawfully detained and restrained.
- [00:31:20.740]And so they also employed the use of habeas corpus more than their white
- [00:31:26.300]counterparts to resist all different types of detainment. And so, yeah, it
- [00:31:32.900]became a powerful tool in the 19th century to
- [00:31:35.160]resist enslavement, challenge deportation, reclaim children, and even
- [00:31:39.880]challenge detainment in mental institutions.
- [00:31:43.400]Okay, so I'm going to also share a little context of the court system that these
- [00:31:50.940]Black mothers have to navigate because, as Kamala Harris says, do you think you
- [00:31:55.720]just fell out of a coconut tree? You exist within all that came before you.
- [00:32:02.800]So that's important that we understand.
- [00:32:04.960]The legal system that they're navigating and so one is the Fugitive Slave Law of
- [00:32:11.440]1850 that required enslaved people to be returned to their owners even if they
- [00:32:16.660]were living in a free state at the time. The 1857 Dred Scott ruling which upheld
- [00:32:22.300]slavery in the United States and denied citizenship to Black Americans and that
- [00:32:27.280]citizenship is important right because how a lot of people are like how are they
- [00:32:31.700]accessing the courts if they aren't citizens?
- [00:32:34.760]And then coverture laws as well affecting women's rights. I think a lot
- [00:32:39.100]of people focus on like Black people were denied all these rights but also
- [00:32:43.480]women were as well and these mothers that I studied they are Black and women
- [00:32:48.080]and so they also had to deal with coverture laws that said that no female
- [00:32:52.780]person had a legal identity and only had a legal identity under a husband or
- [00:32:57.880]father's rules so technically they could not make contracts be sued or own
- [00:33:02.760]businesses.
- [00:33:04.560]This is not true from all the cases that were shared today but also just you
- [00:33:09.160]know if you read They Were Her Property by Stephanie Jones Rogers that is a
- [00:33:13.740]great book that looks at white women's participation in the slave trade and so
- [00:33:20.800]yeah and then finally the aftermath of the Civil War as America is trying
- [00:33:24.780]struggling to figure out how to integrate African Americans as citizens
- [00:33:29.180]politically socially and economically and so I just wanted to share these
- [00:33:33.360]things to
- [00:33:34.360]help us all understand that like this is a very messy time there's a lot going
- [00:33:38.720]on there's a lot to navigate for these Black mothers and a lot of who are poor
- [00:33:43.120]a lot of who are enslaved or like freed women and so just keep that at the
- [00:33:49.840]forefront of your mind as we were like listening to these stories so the case
- [00:33:55.140]that I'm gonna share that that is what I had to read and I did you all a favor by
- [00:34:00.260]darkening it for you so you can read it better
- [00:34:04.160]but it's Elizabeth Lizzie Byrd versus Frances Patmore and so
- [00:34:10.860]Elizabeth Byrd a free woman of color she sent her ten-year-old daughter Missouri
- [00:34:15.700]to live and work for a widowed white woman Frances Patmore Lizzie believed
- [00:34:20.700]that Missouri will only be with Frances for a limited time and when it came time
- [00:34:24.700]for Lizzie to be reunited with her daughter she was prevented from doing so
- [00:34:29.160]resorting to the court Lizzie through her lawyer Clark O'Connolly filed a
- [00:34:33.960]habeas petition for her daughter Missouri where she asserts that Frances
- [00:34:37.620]was keeping Missouri to quote secure and extort her services as a servant without
- [00:34:42.420]paying her for her labor in response Frances Patmore a 35 year old widow of
- [00:34:48.740]Union soldier Oscar Patmore claimed that Missouri did not want to leave her home
- [00:34:52.860]because quote Lizzie mistreated and abused her Frances was not able to provide any
- [00:34:59.520]evidence to support these claims and there is no testimony from Missouri
- [00:35:03.760]but Lizzie's experiences experience of being labeled unfit is often
- [00:35:11.360]representational of the thoughts of Black motherhood at the time because
- [00:35:16.840]during slavery kinlessness and unfit parenting was mapped onto Black mothers
- [00:35:22.360]to help justify enslavement and so kinship became something that can only be
- [00:35:28.840]claimed in freedom and usually Blackness signified freedoms opposite right and
- [00:35:33.560]so Black mothers held this stereotype around them that they were not fit that
- [00:35:38.660]they didn't care about their children or that kinship and community wasn't
- [00:35:42.180]important to the Black community both Lizzie and Francis attempt to position
- [00:35:48.820]themselves as the best people to care for Missouri and so Lizzie uses language
- [00:35:54.860]such as true and lawful mother or custodian which demonstrates Lizzie
- [00:36:01.120]believed her relationship with her daughter to be
- [00:36:03.360]legitimate and protected under the law and she's also using language that
- [00:36:06.780]positions herself as the biological mother which she knew at the time the
- [00:36:11.640]courts put a lot of emphasis on like biological parentage whereas yeah
- [00:36:19.740]whereas Francis stresses that Lizzie was abusive and that she had been clothing
- [00:36:24.180]and taking care of the child while she lived with her so she's showing them like
- [00:36:28.440]I have taken care of her all this time I fed and clothed her
- [00:36:33.160]Elizabeth is abusive so I should be the one to take care of Missouri and so we
- [00:36:41.280]see that both positioning the other as to be an immoral person undeserving of
- [00:36:48.500]having custody of Missouri and so in cases of child custody during the 19th
- [00:36:52.760]century this increasingly became the strategy
- [00:36:55.540]for obtaining custody if you can prove that somebody was less moral than you
- [00:36:59.920]because emphasis was placed on upbringing good
- [00:37:02.960]Republican citizens good good citizens for the nation yeah and so it wasn't
- [00:37:12.980]about proving that you could just provide financially for the child but
- [00:37:16.280]also that you could provide a better moral upbringing and so we don't know
- [00:37:22.140]the outcome of Lizzie's case which is unfortunate and frustrating but there is
- [00:37:28.080]still so much that we can draw from her case and so for me this case
- [00:37:32.760]reveals that there is a lot of tensions over child labor coercive labor and
- [00:37:37.140]Black maternal custody during the Reconstruction era of Midwest but we
- [00:37:41.820]also 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
- [00:37:49.040]Oscar Patmore was Francis's husband so ostensibly she also agreed with the
- [00:37:57.780]Union or was pro-union we don't know but you know just
- [00:38:02.560]because you fought for the Union does not necessarily mean that you believe
- [00:38:05.800]that Black people are equal or should be equal and also people during the 19th
- [00:38:11.080]century again are invoking a kind of prototype of the best interest of the
- [00:38:15.160]child language to get the courts to decide in favor which becomes the
- [00:38:20.160]foundation again for family law today which I think it will be one of the most
- [00:38:24.360]important parts of my dissertation and then finally even after the Civil War
- [00:38:30.760]Black families faced
- [00:38:32.360]threats of separation and forced labor and so while we celebrate this Juneteenth
- [00:38:36.960]let us remember that freedom liberty and respect was not given within a day and
- [00:38:41.760]it is something that African Americans still fight for and then I'll end with
- [00:38:47.160]some lingering questions that I have in case anybody was wondering was gonna ask
- [00:38:50.760]I'm gonna let you know that I'm already thinking about it so like how did Lizzie
- [00:38:56.360]come to find Clark O'Connor her lawyer did she hear about it from neighbors was
- [00:39:02.160]he known for finding other habeas petitions was he known for being involved in other
- [00:39:06.760]child custody cases I haven't been able to figure that out how did she pay him did
- [00:39:11.360]she pay him again what kind of community did Lizzie have to lean on during this experience
- [00:39:17.420]because I would imagine having her child taken away from you is a very traumatic experience
- [00:39:22.080]and so you know who again who did she go to to feel that grief and sorrow with and then
- [00:39:28.420]what was Missouri's experience like we don't have any testimony from the child
- [00:39:31.960]herself about what it was like to be taken from her mother or what who she believed was
- [00:39:37.080]best fit to take care of her and so I'd like to just sit and think through you know what
- [00:39:41.860]Missouri's experience was like and then finally how did Lizzie physically experience the court
- [00:39:47.640]what was it like to enter into the courtroom what was it like to talk with the court reporter
- [00:39:54.260]or the county clerk.
- [00:39:57.000]So physical space is something that I hope to build into the project to help us think
- [00:40:01.760]about the courtroom as a space and so yeah that's what I want to do.
- [00:40:06.720]Thank you very much we've got time for a couple of questions.
- [00:40:21.400]So I will say for me it's about using other sources to try to think about what people
- [00:40:29.200]who necessarily are my characters but other people.
- [00:40:31.560]What that time would have experienced and trying to build that story and imagine what
- [00:40:35.380]it would be like.
- [00:40:36.380]I think we will never the archives will never reveal like the story to us and so I think
- [00:40:42.800]it's really unproductive to just like sit in that frustration and so for me I just try
- [00:40:47.500]to find secondary sources or other primary sources that might speak to what their experience
- [00:40:52.580]would be like if that makes sense.
- [00:40:56.600]So a lot of my trials actually do end conclusively so that's a bit of a hard question for me
- [00:41:01.360]but there is one trial that I was mentioning Lewis who I'm not sure and I'm having a chapter
- [00:41:07.540]in my dissertation that talks about the violence of courts so I'm talking about like constant
- [00:41:12.240]retrials also the language they were using and not knowing conclusively I'm also arguing
- [00:41:18.040]is a type of violence just because you could not know what your fate is or one court could
- [00:41:22.300]decide that you're free and then also decide that you're not if the defendant comes back
- [00:41:27.100]so kind of talking about violence in that way.
- [00:41:31.160]Yeah I guess I'm cheating because I also have an end and then some for the case I'm looking
- [00:41:39.200]at yeah but I know it's rare and it took me a while to get to this case and just sort
- [00:41:45.540]of related to Hannah so therefore my dissertation question isn't so much about ends or like
- [00:41:50.960]singular dates and singular instances but thinking about legal process and what happens
- [00:41:57.820]in legal cases like the they aren't solved instantaneously.
- [00:42:00.960]Even when there are conclusive outcomes and sometimes even a conclusive outcome isn't
- [00:42:06.960]the end of the story.
- [00:42:08.480]So while John Roach was his case concluded with his freedom affirmed I learned that he
- [00:42:15.900]ended up indebted and potentially incarcerated a few years later.
- [00:42:20.960]So getting I mean it's I think it's good to be uncomfortable with history sometimes.
- [00:42:28.520]Healthy to be uncomfortable sometimes.
- [00:42:30.760]Where a lot of learning happens and obviously I like to learn.
- [00:42:35.100]I'm in a Ph.D. program so yeah.
- [00:42:38.600]Got one down front here.
- [00:42:40.680]So for everybody's benefit the question is about Judy suing a pastor and the relationship
- [00:42:46.620]raising this question about what's the relationship between slavery and freedom suits and religion?
- [00:42:53.600]That's such a good question.
- [00:42:54.760]Thank you for that.
- [00:42:56.140]I am focusing on slavery and religion a little bit but because I have so much
- [00:43:00.560]information about these single people, I'm also focusing kind of on Meacham as a person
- [00:43:05.820]in general because he is fascinating.
- [00:43:07.740]He was a Black slave owner.
- [00:43:09.000]He was enslaved and then bought his freedom and then enslaved 20 people.
- [00:43:14.700]And the idea was like, oh, I'm enslaving them so they can work towards their freedom.
- [00:43:19.100]And it's like, well, okay, three people also sued you.
- [00:43:21.300]So I don't know how much that worked.
- [00:43:23.680]But so he's a really fascinating character.
- [00:43:26.580]As I said, he was the founder of the first Black Baptist church, his wife might have
- [00:43:30.360]been an abolitionist.
- [00:43:32.160]So I'm trying to figure out what was happening in that family.
- [00:43:36.180]But yeah, no, I am really interested in teasing out the relationship between religion and
- [00:43:40.640]slavery.
- [00:43:41.640]I'm also looking at the Catholic Church and seeing how they related.
- [00:43:44.240]That's what one of my chapters is about.
- [00:43:45.760]So hopefully, I'll have more answers for you when I finish writing, but yeah.
- [00:43:53.560]One last question.
- [00:43:54.560]Okay.
- [00:43:55.560]Yeah.
- [00:43:56.560]I was just gonna ask if, while reading through any of these legal documents, if you've seen
- [00:44:00.160]any ways that legal information was potentially spreading through the Black community and
- [00:44:06.200]how they might learn about some of these legal avenues that they're using to fight for their
- [00:44:10.180]freedom or any of the such.
- [00:44:17.340]For me, I've been looking at Black periodicals and newspapers, magazines, things like that.
- [00:44:24.040]I know in the Christian Recorder, they spoke a lot about Black motherhood, and so I have
- [00:44:29.960]an inkling that that is where a lot of the conversation is happening.
- [00:44:33.640]But I also know that usually in barbershops and public spaces, there is also a lot of
- [00:44:39.400]conversation happening.
- [00:44:40.400]And I think one of the tensions of my dissertation is trying to figure out how much I should
- [00:44:45.780]reveal about their communities, where they share information, right?
- [00:44:50.940]Because it's hidden for a reason as a survival strategy, and so I'm just really thinking
- [00:44:55.100]about is it ethical to reveal that or not?
- [00:44:59.760]And so, yeah.
- [00:45:01.940]Yeah, so that's also, that's a hard question.
- [00:45:09.680]So the family's lawyer was a prominent freedom suit lawyer, so I'm like, it's probably everyone
- [00:45:15.140]knew.
- [00:45:16.140]Also, it, well, not everyone, but a lot of people probably knew.
- [00:45:20.480]Also, interestingly enough, at the same time that Judy is suing for her freedom, there's
- [00:45:25.120]another enslaved woman named Judy, who I got very confused with her, but they're not the
- [00:45:29.560]same person.
- [00:45:30.560]Her name is Judy, alias Julia Logan, and she's also suing John Barry Meacham for her freedom.
- [00:45:36.780]So I'm like, they might have been talking since they had the same enslaver, and I don't
- [00:45:40.420]really know if it's a coincidence that they were suing at basically almost the exact same
- [00:45:43.860]time.
- [00:45:44.860]So, possibly those informal communication networks, I'm thinking, as well.
- [00:45:50.280]Yeah, I mean, I've, nothing is definitive, right, in the, like, nothing says, John Roach
- [00:45:57.700]has a diary, and he learned it from...
- [00:45:59.360]This other Black person, unfortunately.
- [00:46:02.440]But similarly, people, other people who the Romans claimed as slaves file freedom suits
- [00:46:08.500]around the same times, but also there are runaway advertisements saying that people
- [00:46:14.540]that they claimed as slaves were fleeing, so I imagine it's a group effort, and I think
- [00:46:20.260]that's something that stood out, even though I only talked about one person, I think all
- [00:46:23.840]of us are dealing with communities, sometimes families, in a sort of more biological sense,
- [00:46:29.160]but also kin networks that don't necessarily appear in the one named plaintiff, but there's
- [00:46:34.840]a whole community supporting these trials, so that's a good question.
- [00:46:40.780]All right.
- [00:46:41.780]All right.
- [00:46:42.780]Thank you very much.
- [00:46:43.780]Charlene, do you have anything to wrap up?
- [00:46:47.880]I just want to say thank you again for your research, thank you for the Digital Legal
- [00:46:56.280]Research Lab, and this program.
- [00:46:58.960]And thank you for all coming, thank my colleagues, especially Regina, Joni, and Erin for their
- [00:47:05.900]help in doing this.
- [00:47:06.900]So one more round of applause.
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