History, Department of
Date of this Version
2022
Document Type
Presentation
Citation
Heidi Martin, "A Home Shielded by Laws: Freedom Suits and Enslaved Mothers" [Research Poster]
Digital Legal Research Lab REU Site, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2022
Abstract
This project collects, digitizes, and makes accessible the freedom suits brought by enslaved families in the Circuit Court for the District of Columbia, Maryland state courts, and the United States Supreme Court. This project places families in the foreground of our interpretive framework of slavery and national formation.
Using TEI encoding, we focused on outcomes, relationships between individuals and the claim for freedom made. Using these data sets, I focused specefically on mothers petitioning for their children. Of the 508 cases I utilized, 131 included children and a parental figure. I set out to distinguish the additional burden mothers had to face when petitioning for their freedom. Did mothers have a heavier burden of proof petitioning for themselves and their children, knowing it was not only their own fredom, but the freedom of all descendants at stake?
Advisor: Katrina Jagodinsky
Included in
African American Studies Commons, American Politics Commons, American Studies Commons, Asian American Studies Commons, Chicana/o Studies Commons, Digital Humanities Commons, Ethnic Studies Commons, Latina/o Studies Commons, Legal Studies Commons, Native American Studies Commons, Political History Commons, Public History Commons, United States History Commons, Women's History Commons
Comments
Copyright 2022, Heidi Martin. Used by permission