The story of an enslaved woman who went to court to win her freedom more than 80 years before the Emancipation Proclamation had been pushed to the fringes of history.
A group of civic leaders, activists and historians hope that ended Sunday in the quiet Massachusetts town of Sheffield with the unveiling of a bronze statue of the woman who chose the name Elizabeth Freeman when she shed the chains of slavery 241 years ago to the day.
Her story, while remarkable, remains relatively obscure.
State Rep. William “Smitty” Pignatelli grew up not far from Sheffield in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts yet didn’t hear her story until about 20 years ago. He found that many of his colleagues in the Statehouse were also largely in the dark about the significance of her case, which set the legal precedent that essentially ended slavery in Massachusetts.
“She’s clearly a hidden figure in American history, and I really believe Black history is American history,” said Pignatelli, a Democrat. “But unfortunately, Black history is what we haven’t been told and taught.”
The enslaved woman, known as Bett, could not read or write, but she listened.
And what she heard did not make sense.
While she toiled in bondage in the household of Col. John Ashley, he and other prominent citizens of Sheffield met to discuss their grievances about British tyranny. In 1773, they wrote in what are known as the Sheffield Resolves that “Mankind in a state of nature are equal, free, and independent of each other.”
Those words were echoed in Article 1 of the Massachusetts Constitution in 1780, which begins “All men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights.”
It is believed that Bett, after hearing a public reading of the constitution, walked roughly 5 miles from the Ashley household to the home of attorney Theodore Sedgwick, one of the citizens who drafted the Sheffield Resolves, and asked him to represent her in her legal quest for freedom, said Paul O’Brien, president of the Sheffield Historical Society.
Sedgwick and another attorney, Tapping Reeve, took the case.
Women had limited legal rights in Massachusetts courts at the time, so a male slave in the Ashley household named Brom was added to the case.
The jury agreed with the attorneys, freeing Bett and Brom on Aug. 21, 1781.