So much intense and devoted scholarship has occurred over the last more than three decades to discovering, preserving, and illuminating the St. Louis freedom suits. The early work of William Foley and Bob Moore may seem to have been overlooked, if only because they are from so long ago. However, members of our Foundation Board prefer to think of these as seeds planted that merely took their time in blossoming into much larger projects.
Those projects included the “rescuing” of the St. Louis freedom suits – see the segment of “Rescuing History: Rediscovering the St. Louis Freedom Suits” herein. They also include three thorough freedom suits books by Kelly Kennington, Anne Twitty, and Lea VanderVelde.
Primary Sources
Delaney, Lucy A. From the Darkness Cometh the Light, or Struggles for Freedom in Six Women’s Slave Narratives. William L. Andrews, ed., New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Articles
Foley, William E. “Slave Freedom Suits Before Dred Scott: The Case of Marie Jean Scypion’s Descendants” Missouri Historical Review 79, no. 1 (October 1984): 1-23
Finkelman, Paul. “The Politics of Slavery and Mother’s First Elected Supreme Court: Dred Scott v. Emerson in Kenneth H. Winn, ed., Missouri Law and the American Conscience; Historical Rights and Wrongs. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2016, 63-83.
Kennington, Kelly M., “Geography, Mobility, and the Law: Suing for Freedom in Antebellum St. Louis,” Journal of Southern History, August 2014, 575-604.
Konig, David Thomas. “The Long Road to Dred Scott: Personhood and the Rule of Law in the Trial Court Records of St. Louis Slave Freedom Suits.” University of Missouri-Kansas City Law Review. 45, no. 1 (Fall 2006): 53-79.
Konig, David Thomas. “The Persistence of Caste: Race, Rights, and the Legal Struggle to Expand the Boundaries of Freedom in St. Louis.” Washington University Journal of Law & Policy. 67 no. 1 (2022); 53-79.
Moore, Robert, Jr. “A Ray of Hope, Extinguished: St. Louis Slave Suits for Freedom.” Gateway Heritage 14 no. 3 (1993-1994): 4-15.
Twitty, Anne. “Litigating Freedom During the Missouri Crisis” in Jeffrey L. Palsey and John Craig Hammond, eds., A Fire Bell in the Past: The Missouri Crisis at 200. Vol. 1. Western Slavery, National Impasse. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2021, 285-319.
Books
Kaufman, Kenneth C. Dred Scott’s Advocate: A Biography of Roswell M. Field. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1996.
Kennington, Kelly M., In the Shadow of Dred Scott: St. Louis Freedom Suits and the Legal Culture of Slavery in Antebellum America. Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press, 2017.
Konig, David Thomas, Paul Finkelman, and Christopher Alan Bracey, eds., The Dred Scott Case: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Race and Law. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2010.
Schweninger, Loren. Appealing for Liberty: Freedom Suits in the South. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018.
Sestric, Anthony J. 57 Years: A History of the Freedom Suits in Missouri Courts. St. Louis, MO: Reedy Press, 2012.
Twitty, Anne. Before Dred Scott: Slavery and the Legal Culture in the American Confluence, 1787-1857. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016.
VanderVelde, Lea. Mrs. Dred Scott: A Life on Slavery’s Frontier. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
VanderVelde, Lea. Redemption Songs: Suing for Freedom before Dred Scott. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.
FREEDOM SUITS MEMORIAL FOUNDATION 