Born 1744? (Claverack, New York?)

Died December 28, 1829 (Stockbridge, Massachusetts)

Slave, freewoman, nursemaid, nanny, housekeeper

On December 6, 1865, eight months after the conclusion of the American Civil War (1861–65), Congress ratified the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, banning slavery in the United States. Eighty-four years earlier, in 1781, a determined black slave, Elizabeth Freeman, brought a lawsuit against her master, John Ashley, in a Massachusetts county court and won her freedom.

Freeman could neither read nor write, but she had listened attentively to community leaders' discussions about freedom at meetings held in Ashley's Sheffield, Massachusetts, home. In the spring of 1781, she happened to hear a reading of the Declaration of Independence at a town meeting. She reasoned that the Declaration's statements about freedom and equality applied to her along with everyone else living on American soil. Careful consideration of the ideas expressed in the Declaration prompted Freeman to file...