BLACK HISTORY MONTH
A LASTING LEGACY:
Black Women and U.S. Legal History
Thumbing through images of Black history, many might be surprised to find that very few Black women are depicted in images, or that their stories were even shared. In February, Holland & Knight hosted the program, “Black Women and U.S. Legal History,” which spotlighted the stories of Black women that are not prominently known, but are worth sharing. Patrice Dixon, an associate at Jackson Lewis, and Andrea Kramer, founder of Kramer Law LLC, presented on the importance of Black women in U.S. legal history and the need to remove the invisibility of their roles, contributions and sometimes existence. Slavery in America and Its Creation as a Legal System Ms. Dixon discussed the beginnings of slavery in America in 1619, when the first African-Americans arrived in what is now Hampton, Virginia, and were sold into slavery. One of the first recorded women sold into slavery, she said, was a woman known as Angela, who was sometimes referred to as “Angelo.” 1
During the early 1600s, the British did not have any laws regarding slavery, but Massachusetts was the first colony to legitimize slavery through the passage of the Massachusetts Body of Liberties in 1641. Kramer shared the story of Elizabeth Key Grinstead, who was of African and English descent and in 1656 became one of the first women in the North American colonies to sue for her freedom and win. Challenging Slavery and Segregation Another prominent Black woman in U.S. legal history was Harriet Robinson Scott, who tried to gain her freedom for many years. Ms. Kramer shared the story of Harriet and her husband, Dred Scott, who filed separate lawsuits for their freedom. Their cases were combined by the Missouri Supreme Court, but only Dred Scott’s name lived on in the title of the infamous case that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, a decision in which the Scotts lost their fight for freedom and that intensified national divisions over slavery.
