EVENTS
Suing Slavery: Freedom Suits in 18th C essex county
ONLINE, THURSDAY, JUNE 12, 2025, 7-8:30PM ET
JEANNE PICKERING
Twenty-one enslaved people in 18th century Essex county, Massachusetts, sued for their freedom and won. Starting as suits on the basis of a free parent, soon these freedom suits posed questions to white citizen juries: who had rights, the enslaved or the enslaver? Scholar Jeanne Pickering explores these lawsuits and how they both helped to end Massachusetts slavery and expanded the American definition of freedom.
“We became aware of enslaved people’s actions in their own cause – they were not just background in the nation’s origin story.”
-audience member