In 1816, New York passed its Gradual Emancipation Law, which freed enslaved people born after July 4, 1799, once they became adults. Under the law, enslaved people couldn’t be sold out of state. After the law was passed, Sojourner Truth’s son, five-year-old son Peter, was illegally sold down South. Truth marched to the nearest courthouse.
She filed a lawsuit to reverse the sale. She raised funds to hire a lawyer named Charles Ruggles, but he was so inspired by Truth’s conviction that he didn’t charge her. Truth won the case, making her the first Black woman ever to win a court case against a white person. Peter was returned to his mother. But Truth’s court battles were far from over.
Years later, Truth was accused of poisoning her employer by his friends and business partners, one of whom was a suspect himself. He hoped the jury and public opinion would assume that an enslaved Black woman was more likely to commit murder than an upstanding white businessman. Truth understood the legal system and her rights. She used the libel laws to clear her name and rack up another legal win.
The police and prison industrial complex intentionally make the law hard to understand so that we will feel too intimidated to question the “justice system."
While we aim to build Black-liberated futures based on abolitionist principles, it is still important that we understand the legal system and our rights. Like Truth, we can’t let these systems play in our faces.