Free Negro - Women

Women

Within free black marriages, many women were able to participate more equally in their relationships than elite white women. This potential for equality in marriage can be seen through the example of the “colored aristocracy” of the small black elite in St. Louis, where women were often economic partners in their marriages.These small groups of blacks were descended from African or French and Spanish mixed marriages. Under the French, the women in these marriages had the same rights as white women and could hold property. These black women hoped to remain financially independent both for themselves and for the sake of protecting their children from Missouri’s restrictive laws.This level of black female agency also made female-centered households attractive to widows.The traditional idea of husband dominating wife could not be the central idea in these elite marriages because of women’s importance in bringing income into the family. Women had to exercise caution in married relationships, however, as marrying a black man who was still a slave would make the free black woman legally responsible for his behavior, good or bad.

There are multiple examples of free black women exerting agency within society, and many of these examples include exerting legal power. Slavery and freedom coexisted with an uncertainty that was dangerous for free blacks. From 1832 to 1837, the story of Margaret Morgan and her family presents a prime example of the danger to free blacks from the ambiguous legal definitions of their status. The Morgan family’s legal entanglement led to the case of Prigg v. Pennsylvania in which it was decided that their captors could supersede Pennsylvania’s personal liberty law and claim ownership of the Morgans. This case highlighted the constitutional ambiguity of black rights while also illustrating the active effort by some in the white community to limit free blacks’ rights.

In New England, slave women went to court to gain their freedom while free black women went to court to hold onto theirs; the New England legal system was unique in its accessibility to free blacks and the availability of attorneys. Women’s freedom suits were often based on technicalities such as the lack of legal slave documents or mixed race ancestry that exempted some from slave service. In New England in 1716, Joan Jackson became the first slave woman to win her freedom in the New England court.

Elizabeth Freeman brought the first legal test of the constitutionality of slavery in MA, and as a land owner and tax payer, is considered to be one of the most famous black women of the revolutionary era. Couverture limited the ability of some free black women to file lawsuits on their own, but a few women still filed jointly with their husbands.