Whites Who Insist History Doesn't Affect How Blacks See America Today Know Nothing Of Blacks Or History

An early case was that of the Scypion sisters, who sued the most prominent family in St. Louis and won their freedom, on the grounds that their mother was Native American and so could not have been legally enslaved. Lydia Titus, a free woman living in Illinois, watched helplessly as white men kidnapped her five children and two grandchildren in the middle of the night, taking them across the border to the slave state of Missouri. Titus enlisted the law to prove that their capture was illegal, and eventually the family was reunited. An enslaved man named John Merry tried to buy his freedom for $100 and a horse, but his master took the horse and the money and kept John Merry as a slave—until John Merry took him to court.

Slaves risked jail time for bringing suits, because, as disputed property, they could be essentially impounded while the court made its decision. But jail also kept them safe from retaliation, as slave owners who were sued sometimes kidnapped the plaintiffs and sold them farther south. The slaves, meanwhile, got no support or encouragement from abolitionist groups back East. “These folks were on their own,” VanderVelde says.