Slave Court Cases

North Carolina v. Negro Will (1834) In 1834, on a plantation in Edgecombe County North Carolina, a slave named Will refused to share a hoe he had made with his own hands, an act of defiance that got him shot in the back. As he lay wounded, Will reached up and fatally slashed his overseer on the hip and the arm, earning himself a trip to the gallows. But before the … [Read more...] about Friday Open Thread: Little Known Slave Court Cases

Jenny Slew (1719 - unknown) was one of the first black Americans to sue for her freedom, and the first person to succeed through trial by jury. Jenny Slew was born circa 1719 to a free white woman and an enslaved black man. That fact would become the core of an historical legal case forty-six years later in Ipswich, Essex County, Massachusetts Bay Colony. Jenny contended … [Read more...] about Thursday Open Thread: Little Known Slave Court Cases

The judicial system is the venue which offers legal recourse to correct wrongs, even to segments of society that, historically, were not recognized by the law as citizens. As early as 1807, under Missouri territorial statutes, persons held in wrongful servitude could sue for freedom if they had evidence of wrongful enslavement. The territorial statute was codified in Missouri … [Read more...] about Wednesday Open Thread: Little Known Slave Court Cases

State v. Caesar, a Slave (N.C. 1849) One of the most notorious antebellum slave murder cases concerned a North Carolina slave named Caesar. The incident began in 1848, near the town of Jameston, when two drunken white men came across two slaves in a field near a storehouse. One of the white men, known only as Brickhouse, lied to the slaves, saying he and his friend where … [Read more...] about Tuesday Open Thread: Little Known Slave Court Cases