Rescuing History: Rediscovering the St. Louis Freedom Suits
By Kenneth H. Winn, Ph.D.
Missouri State Archivist, 1991-2007
Overview
Beginning in 2000, the Missouri State Archives, through its St. Louis Circuit Court Historical Records Project, led the initial efforts to locate, identify, preserve, and make accessible the court papers of more than 300 previously unknown freedom suits plaintiffs. People had always saved the records of the wealthy and the politically prominent, but the Archives’ access to St. Louis’ Circuit Court records, which had been granted in 1999, offered a new ability to see into the lives of the poor, the inarticulate, and the historically overlooked. Records concerning the lives of the wealthy and politically prominent were, of course, also among those records, but now the lives of Blacks—slave and free—poor whites, Irish and German immigrants, prostitutes, steamboat workers, and the early sights, sounds, and even smells of the village, town, and eventual city in which these people lived were now available in much greater detail—a world under-documented in the country’s historical repositories and libraries.
We were particularly drawn to the compelling stories of enslaved Blacks, who mustered amazing courage and often risked life and limb to sue their masters in an all-white court system. There is much more to uncover in the court records, but the discovery and sharing of the St. Louis freedom suits with scholars and the general public has greatly enriched and broadened our historical understanding of the lives and the bravery of people who had been largely lost to history. To date the project has been the most successful of all the Missouri State Archives (MSA) legal records initiatives, garnering national attention through scholarly and popular books and articles, television, radio, and newspaper stories, and public presentations. This work has been crowned with the building of the Freedom Suits Memorial on what is now “Freedom Plaza” on the east side of the St. Louis Civil Courts Building. As Americans were taking down monuments to the leaders of the Confederate rebellion, St. Louisans in 2022 built a monument to the poor and disenfranchised who dared to challenge their enslavement.
It was a long road to this capstone, and it was made possible through the efforts of hundreds of people—archivists, professional historians, students, volunteers, politicians, and generous donors. Its beginning, however, was more prosaic.
In 1991 I became the State Archivist of Missouri, which coincided with the creation of the Archives’ Local Records Program. This, in turn, set the table for ambitious effort at rescuing Missouri’s circuit court records. A decade earlier the Chief Justice of the Missouri Supreme Court had issued an order making the Archives the custodian of its records and required that all lower courts offer their historic records to the State Archives before destroying them. Previously, saving these documents had been an impossible task, and it remains extremely challenging. Nonetheless the Archives’ Local Records Program began helping courts from across the state to organize, conserve, microfilm, and digitize their holdings.
Unknown to History—over 230 Years of St. Louis Legal Records
Even in counties without St. Louis’ storied history the Archives’ staff was finding extraordinary things that would potentially help rewrite Missouri’s past. Happily, St. Louis’ legal officials had merged the village’s colonial legal records, which dated back to the 1760s, with its territorial records, eventually incorporating them into the civil court records that began after statehood, leaving a continuous series of legal records documenting 250 years of St. Louis’ history. There are still many millions of pages unreviewed by historians or members of the public even as new books and articles continue to appear based on what is being gradually recovered.
Across Missouri, the Archives first had to obtain the permission of each local circuit clerk. Knowing that the St. Louis City Circuit Court records contained a treasure trove of important historical materials, the State Archives Local Records Director Lynn Morrow had asked for access to St. Louis’ City Circuit Court cases but had been rebuffed. However, in the summer of 1999, a new St. Louis City Circuit Clerk, Mariano Favazza, said he would consider giving the Archives access to its historical holdings.
If Favazza was interested, he was also hesitant. Yet Morrow remained encouraged and suggested it was time for us to visit Favazza together. We met in August 1999. In the course of our meeting Favazza repeatedly asked me if our services were “really free.” I assured him they were. I noted, however, that my staff had to have complete access and control over the older non-active records. He agreed to our arrangement but required the court’s records to remain in St. Louis. To make that possible he gave us a portion of the space he rented in the old St. Louis Globe-Democrat building, which was just down Tucker Boulevard from the Civil Courts Building. There, we set up an office and a basic conservation lab. As time would show, Favazza proved a key ally. (It did cost him a little money in the end, but not too much.)
After an initial survey of the huge volume of cases involved – estimated to include millions of pages – Morrow calculated a chronological document review would take us 24.5 years to reach the 1876 constitutional division of St. Louis City from St. Louis County. As of 2024, that goal is not even close to being reached. The records will, no doubt, provide the basis for new discoveries for the indefinite future. The project’s intimidating scale, however, did not mean it was not worth trying. To get this formidable task underway, Morrow and I hired a relentlessly genial archivist named Mike Everman to run the operation. His good sense and diplomatic skill would prove essential to its success.
The Tragic Dred Scott Case—the Historical “Gift” that Keeps on Giving
In convincing people that our work was worth investing in we kept in mind subprojects we hoped would capture people’s imagination, including those with only a scant knowledge of the city’s history. Seemingly obscure records might ultimately prove as important or more important than those that initially seemed flashy, but we knew we should lean on cases that did not need a special explanation. An example was records related to the members of the Lewis and Clark expedition. But then there was Dred Scott’s initial petition for freedom. The Dred Scott Case was horrible for Dred and Harriet Scott, and then horrible for the nation. Yet for historians and those who care about the history of the enslaved, the tragic Scott case is the case that keeps on giving. Its importance is widely known, and the case’s original records have always been kept separate from the other circuit court case files. Authors of books and articles that subsequently appeared about the freedom suits have worked Dred Scott’s name into their title.
In November 1999, Circuit Clerk Favazza gave us permission to take the original Scott case to Jefferson City to let our conservation staff restore the documents in our laboratory. The conservators did a wonderful job, using all the advanced techniques at their disposal, even giving the original petition a bath of sorts. When the work was completed, we returned it to St. Louis, accompanied by a large celebration. Hundreds of people attended, including current Freedom Suits Memorial Foundation board member Lynne Jackson, along with other descendants of Dred and Harriet Scott. The event, held at the old “Dred Scott Courthouse,” was presided over by St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay, and included most of the area circuit court judges, other state and local officials, and was solemnly serenaded with a choir. A year later the Missouri State Archives digitized the entire case and put it online. Stories about the original ceremony and its ensuing placement of the Scott case online appeared in the New York Times, were mentioned on CNN and the CBS Evening News, and appeared in a wire story carried in papers across the country.
Friends, Funding, and Growing Fame
The richness of the court records quickly brought us friends and allies. United Missouri Bank gave us our very first gift of $10,000. In a city the size of St. Louis a $10,000 donation may not seem remarkable, but Secretary of State Bekki Cook, the Director of the Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis, Ken Klein, Circuit Clerk Mariano Favazza, and I, held a well-received press conference at the bank. The attention led to more and greater donations and grants.
In late 2000, we secured a $190,000 public-private “Save America’s Treasures” grant to help preserve the early court records. The money was given to the Archives at a White House Ceremony hosted by First Lady Hillary Clinton. To put things in perspective, other awards that year included those for the restoration of the Wright Brothers’ original airplane and of the flag that inspired Francis Scott Key to compose the Star-Spangled Banner. The National Endowment for the Humanities later also bestowed two sizeable grants on the project.
Gradually, our work began attracting nationwide attention, and we received awards and special recognition from national and state organizations. In 2005, the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) issued a national, landmark report entitled, A Public Trust at Risk, warning of America’s growing loss of its own history. Notably, that report celebrated the St. Louis Circuit Court records project as a counterexample to this trend. Our “award-winning” court records project began attracting additional allies and helped us win favor and additional funding from the state legislature.
As our work on the circuit court records began, I had requested the Archives staff to seek records related to the members of the “Voyage of Discovery.” When we initially gained access to the circuit court records, work on the national Lewis and Clark bicentennial commemoration was already underway. I served as the Secretary of State’s representative on Missouri’s state Lewis and Clark Commission. (A connection I made there would later prove important to our freedom suit project.) When our comparatively small Lewis and Clark project was complete, we began considering our next project. Outside of the Dred and Harriet Scott case, we had not given much thought to other slave freedom suits. I was aware of a few other cases. For example, the historian William Foley had years before written an influential essay about the daughters of Marie Scypion, a Black and Natchez enslaved woman. Their legal struggle for freedom, which lasted for a quarter-century, pitted three half-Indigenous, half-Black women against St. Louis’ powerful Chouteau clan, the founding family of the city. The Chouteau’s defeat proved the decisive end of Indigenous enslavement in Missouri.
But the key to our eventual selection of the freedom suit project had its origins with a St. Louis City Circuit Court employee named Mel Conley. She had a personal interest in Black history and began noticing a surprisingly large number of slave freedom suits. She soon began keeping track of them. It was Conley who alerted Missouri State Local Archives Records Director, Lynn Morrow, to their existence.
The Missouri State Archives was not the first to take advantage of Ms. Conley’s work. That was Robert Moore, the Gateway Arch’s resident historian. With Conley’s assistance, he wrote and published a pioneering essay in the 1993-94 winter issue of the Missouri Historical Society’s Gateway Heritage, entitled, “A Ray of Hope, Extinguished: St. Louis Slave Freedom Suits.” This essay, modestly noticed at the time, would become increasingly influential. A second historian who took advantage of Conley’s work was the University of Iowa Law Professor Lea VanderVelde. I first met her at the Dred Scott ceremony in 2000. She was then in the midst of writing her important book, Mrs. Dred Scott (2009). Through her work on that book, she also learned of the significance of Conley’s discoveries. The Archives soon began working closely with VanderVelde to expedite her research. This eventually resulted in her second book entitled, Redemption Songs: Suing for Freedom Before Dred Scott (2014).
Books take a long time to write, but well before that a stream of sources came together that, in retrospect, made a major project on the St. Louis freedom suits seem like an obvious choice. Virtually any topic was possible, given the millions of pages of available judicial records. Many were discussed. In the end, however, I directed us towards the freedom suits. A part of my decision was admittedly personal; I had a long-time interest in the history of the plight of the enslaved. I had taught a seminar about it at Washington University in St. Louis as early as 1986. I was not then fully satisfied with the available information on the St. Louis slave trade. I did not know what we would find, but I trusted Morrow’s judgment as well Everman’s, who assured me that there was truly a “there there,” as the author Gertrude Stein would say.
As more freedom suits records were found, restored, and organized for research, Mike Everman and his staff began to build an online database. This became a comprehensive research tool which offered the reader the date, the names of the plaintiff and defendant and a brief case summary. It was essentially an online finding aid, which began attracting researchers from a distance.
During the early days of the freedom suit project, we found an ally in the Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis, which permitted me to write articles in its publications. I also turned to the local universities for help. I set up a faculty advisory group, which included people from the University of Missouri—St. Louis, St. Louis University, Southern Illinois University—Edwardsville, and Washington University in St. Louis. In addition to advice, these universities supplied us with faculty, graduate students, and undergraduate interns. Washington University, in particular, helped not only with students but also by supplying computers and other material assistance. Much more was to follow.
As the work progressed and became better known, Missouri Supreme Court Judges visited. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch and local television took an interest, then the Associated Press. In 2003, the Los Angeles Times ran a long front-page AP story (“Cries for Freedom Still Ring”) on our effort, giving significant attention to the student interns. Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-California), who had grown up in St. Louis, flew with her family to look at the records. Hollywood agents called. (I never held my breath, but it was fun.)
In 2008, the Higher Education Channel (HEC) made a documentary film called “Seeking Freedom,” narrated by St. Louis City Circuit Judge David C. Mason and featuring snippets of interviews with Washington University faculty and me. The film won a regional Emmy for best documentary in 2008. Judge Mason continued his interest and later envisioned the monument that became the cornerstone of Freedom Plaza. He also now chairs the board of the Freedom Suits Memorial Foundation.
Enter Washington University in St. Louis
Half a dozen years before the showing of that film, I had met Peter Kastor, a Washington University history professor and the Associate Director of its American Culture Studies Program, at a Lewis and Clark Commission meeting. We had a long talk after the meeting, much of it about our new St. Louis Circuit Court records project. The discussion proved serendipitous, and Washington University in St. Louis’ involvement grew exponentially. Kastor repeated the gist of our discussion to Wayne Fields, the director of WUSTL’s American Culture Studies program and he fully embraced the project. Serious discussions about a collaboration were soon underway.
Working with Washington University Library’s digital program, Fields, his staff, and the Library requested a $400,000 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services—an amount which Washington University pledged to match in time and resources to place all the freedom suits online, including a transcription of each case. In further support of the grant request, the Missouri Historical Society promised to add contextual primary documents, as did the Missouri State Archives. In the end, the IMLS grant sailed through the evaluation process.
Circuit Clerk Favazza granted Washington University students and staff access to the original case files. To see the project through, WUSTL named an advisory committee consisting of Fields, his assistant Deb Jaegers, legal historian David Konig, Peter Kastor, Lea VanderVelde, legal historian Paul Finkleman, lawyer and legal librarian Erika Cohn, and me. The difficult implementation of the plan fell to Andrew Rouner, the head of Washington University’s Library Digital Initiatives. His crucially important work continued long after the advisory board had dissolved.
Even as Washington University began its IMLS grant work, Mike Everman’s team continued to search for cases. By 2005, most of them had been found, nearly doubling those identified by Mel Conley. Identification was the central piece, of course, but preserving and turning identified cases into useful research documents continued until over 300 cases and some 350 plaintiffs had been discovered. In 2017 MSA staffer Quan Arnett-Pruit discovered the last case to date, a “next friend” suit brought on behalf of “baby Edward” against the notorious slave trader Bernard Lynch.
Unfortunately, the verdicts frequently go unnoted in the case files, but of these 300 cases it would appear nearly half of the enslaved plaintiffs won their lawsuits. This is remarkable because the plaintiffs could not testify on their own behalf and were forced to rely on white lawyers and judges and needed white witnesses to help them. They risked physical harm, harassment, and intimidation from those who wished to keep them in bondage.
Given the chances of misfiling and the historic disorder of the collection, new cases will probably be discovered in the future, but the foundational cases have all been located and the general shape of the evidence is now secure.
The Scholars Arrive
The Missouri State Archives’ project began to alert St. Louisans and Missourians – and the nation as a whole- to the existence of the freedom suits. The Washington University project, its grant award, and the publicity that came from placing the freedom suits online attracted the academic community. There were freedom suits in other states, but the well-organized and easy access to St. Louis’ records was a strong draw for researchers. Soon, scholarly articles, and then books, began to appear. Among the first was Professor David Konig’s oft-cited, “The Long Road to Dred Scott: Personhood and the Rule of Law in the Trial Court Records of Slave Freedom Suits,” which was published by the University of Missouri—Kansas City Law Review (2006), and subsequently republished online by the Missouri State Archives. Another early essay appeared in Eric Gardner’s Unexpected Places (2009). Three longer works that won national attention within the scholarly community were VanderVelde’s previously mentioned Redemption Songs (2014), Anne Twitty’s Before Dred Scott: Slavery and Legal Culture in the American Confluence, 1787—1857 (2016), and Kelly Kennington’s In the Shadow of Dred Scott: St. Louis Freedom Suits and the Legal Culture of Slavery in Antebellum America. (2017). Professor Twitty currently serves on the Freedom Suits Memorial Foundation’s board. Another early work of particular interest especially to the St. Louis legal community was attorney Anthony J. Sestric’s 57 Years: A History of the Freedom Suits in the Missouri Courts. (2012).
These works embodied the first decade of scholarship; other books and articles have continued to appear. St. Louis’ freedom suits are now routinely cited and discussed in larger works dealing with a multiplicity of topics involving Black enslavement.
Toward Freedom Plaza
These works were mostly written with an academic audience in mind, but there was a considerable effort to bring the fruit of that research to the general public. Jackson, Konig, VanderVelde, Twitty, Kennington, and I, among others have each spoken many times before professional and public audiences, to legal groups, at National Park Service sites, and provided Black History Month lectures. David Konig, in particular, proved an indefatigable advocate, popularizing the suits, working with Lynne Jackson, joining her “Dred Scott Heritage Foundation,” and serving as an advisor to interested groups and appearing with Anne Twitty, and Kelly Kennington on television and radio. Konig also serves on the board of the Freedom Suits Memorial Foundation.
Many things were still yet to come in the years that followed. The torch would, as it passed, continue to become brighter as others became determined to build a memorial to those who sought their freedom in St. Louis’ Circuit Court.
FREEDOM SUITS MEMORIAL FOUNDATION 