Notes on his clothes meant for meaningful moments in citizens lives and it helped prepare the community for revolution. The emerging war blog, cohosted this event. We saved the best for last. She hates me for saying that. Were concluding with a topic thats close to home here in alexandria. Catherine gruber is the special curator. And earned her bachelors from university of washington and ma from the college of william and mary. She has contributed to the new revolutionary war museum at yorktown, a special exhibition curator, she helped with ten nas tee, william in jamestown in virginia, which i urge you to see and also forgotten soldier, africanamericans in the revolution, open now through march 22nd, 2020. Kate will present her topic, a tailor made revolution. So please welcome my good friend, kate gruber. Good afternoon. So youve got to get through me before we can get to happy hour, so i promise ill make that happen. Mark twain said it best, clothes make the man. Naked people have l
University of nebraska lincoln Professor William thomas, teaches a class on some of the lawsuits brought by slaves who sued for their freedom during the antibell lum period. He outlines the different legal arguments they used and emphasized how most suits affected not just one person but entire families. Okay, good morning, everybody. Lets get started. So today, our subject is freedom suits. Suits brought by enslaved families, and how they posed a challenge to the constitution, and under the constitution, how they posed a challenge to american slavery. Now, most of us are familiar with dread scott, d. John sandford and you all read chief Justice Roger tawnys opinion in dred scotts case. And you have read that opinion, and its notorious in American History, right . For the blatant racism in it, for the sanction that tawny gives to the concept of human property under the constitution, and for denying black citizenship, not only denying black citizenship, but denying even blacks as free,
The constitution did not go beyond. So about these suits, generally, just broadly, and then were going to look at one in particular here. It is important to recognize everything was on the line here. Black plaintiffs directed these suits, okay . They planned these suits. William h. Williams was one of the most notorious slave owners. He owned the yellow house. It was sometimes called a slave pen. We looked at one case, the film we checked out the other day, and that one was similar in that george Millers Tavern was a slave. He is by the 17 and the single largest slaved jail on the city of washington and its called the yellow house. And james ash was taken there and held there and well see why in just a second in 1839. A few months later a man named solomon northrup was taken to the yellow house. He was the star of 12 years a slave. And solomon who was kidnapped and taken to be sold to louisiana and to the southeast, can he was taken to the yellow house after he was kidnapped, and he wr
With dread scott, d. John sandford and you all read chief Justice Roger tawnys opinion in dred scotts case. And you have read that opinion, and its notorious in American History, right . For the blatant racism in it, for the sanction that tawny gives to the concept of human property under the constitution, and for denying black citizenship, not only denying black citizenship, but denying even blacks as free, as persons under the constitution. And so, dred scott was one type of freedom suit, right . It was based on his physical presence in a free state, illinois, and his physical presence in wisconsin, a free territory. And its often presented in American History textbooks as if it were the only freedom suit in American History. To go to the Supreme Court. The only, almost uniformly, presented as dred scott, one man bringing a freedom suit. But when we look into it a little more closely, there were thousands of freedom suits in american courts. All of them challenging the notion of slav
Sandford and you all read chief Justice Roger tawnys opinion in dred scotts case. And you have read that opinion, and its notorious in American History, right . For the blatant racism in it, for the sanction that tawny gives to the concept of human property under the constitution, and for denying black citizenship, not only denying black citizenship, but denying even blacks as free, as persons under the constitution. And so, dred scott was one type of freedom suit, right . It was based on his physical presence in a free state, illinois, and his physical presence in wisconsin, a free territory. And its often presented in American History textbooks as if it were the only freedom suit in American History. To go to the Supreme Court. The only, almost uniformly, presentedup are, presented as dred scott, one man bringing a freedom suit. But when we look into it a little more closely, there were thousands of freedom suits in american courts. All of them challenging the notion of slavery under