harriet. but there are others. many more x es than pictures. this is lucy delaney who signed an x which you as a child and live to write about it after the civil war. swansee adams, one of the duncan slaves, which is one of my favorite stories because it is a story in which there is a superb victory for all of the duncan slaves over all of their duncan masters. but behind each of these stories is a family or an individual and, altogether, many of these freedom suits were family affairs. whether the litigants sued jointly or in succession, a total of 160 persons of the 239 for whom we have records were in the family, they sued as a family. consider then some of these x es clustered together as mothers and children and brothers and sisters. there are some litigants for whom we have no legal records at all, but of these 153 were women and 126 were men. most of the petitioners faced based their claim on the fact they were taken to a place where slavery was banned. here are some
they were bought souls sent and inherited, but they themselves did not buy, sell, contract and inherent. slaves inhabit their masters agenda. they lived through their master s agendas and lives during a time of their enslavement. the subject and subjective quality of their lives is overtaken by their existence as such, slaves are often on notice. it is hard to find details about their lives. they are described in the passive voice as having the characteristics of object. there are many lawsuits that involved slaves. the law books are full of them. they took place over the heads of slaves between free persons. slaves did not sue. i wrote a book about 300 who did. and pardon me. and surprisingly, the majority won. this species of lawsuit is rare, indeed. in breed of cases and freedom cases before dred scott, the slave was pitted in fierce opposition to his or her master. what was a freedom suit? how did a slave get a lawyer? how did a slave get to court? under the procedure
nbc news special report from 1975 communist saigon on american history tv on c-span3. up next on american history tv, law professor lea vandervelde tells the stories of slaves who use the law as a pathway to freedom in the pre-civil war era. she describes how slaves contributed to building frontier communities and discusses several legal cases that illustrate the struggles of both enslaved and freed blacks in the antebellum west. this event from the national archives is about 45 minutes. dr. vandervelde: i should say good morning. it is still morning, right? a few minutes until noon. i want to thank the national archives and doug watson for this opportunity to speak. it is particularly a pleasure for me since it is like history black history month and because the stories i m about to tell you about our heroes of are heroes of black history in my opinion. in the history of the united states supreme court, there is one and only one case where a slave challenged his mast
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