1836 slave freedom case
19th century legal history
19th century slavery in Boston
A01=Karen Woods Weierman
African American legal history
Age Group_Uncategorized
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American legal history of race
antislavery legal history
Author_Karen Woods Weierman
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BFASS activism
Black childhood under slavery
books about slavery law
Boston abolitionist history
Boston in the 1830s
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=HBG
Category=HBJK
Category=JBF
Category=JBSP1
Category=JFF
Category=JFSP1
Category=NHB
Category=NHK
Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw
child slavery case Boston
child slavery case study
child slavery in court
child-centered abolition stories
child-centered antislavery books
childhood and abolition
Commonwealth v. Aves
COP=United States
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
early antislavery activism
enslaved children in America
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eq_history
eq_isMigrated=0
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
erasure of Black children in history
family separation in slavery
female-led antislavery campaigns
forgotten abolitionist cases
forgotten legal history
forgotten slavery stories
free soil legal precedent
fugitive slave laws and exceptions
history of slavery in the North
institutional care for Black children
landmark slavery cases
Language_English
legal history of slavery
legal protections for enslaved minors
legal status of enslaved children
Massachusetts antislavery law
Massachusetts history and slavery
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court slavery cases
Med slavery case
new books on American slavery
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Price_€20 to €50
protecting Black children in history
PS=Active
public memory and slavery
race and childhood in U.S. law
racialized childhood in history
remembering enslaved children
slavery and child labor
slavery and state laws
slavery and U.S. legal history
softlaunch
teaching antislavery movements
women abolitionists in Boston
women in the abolitionist movement
women's role in abolition
Product details
- ISBN 9781625344762
- Weight: 295g
- Dimensions: 152 x 226mm
- Publication Date: 15 Aug 2019
- Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
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In 1836, an enslaved six-year-old girl Named Med was brought to Boston by a woman from New Orleans who claimed her as property. Learning of the girl's arrival in the city, the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society (BFASS) waged a legal fight to secure her freedom and affirm the free soil of MassachuSetts. While Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw ruled quite narrowly in the case that enslaved people brought to MassachuSetts could not be held against their will, BFASS claimed a broad victory for the abolitionist cause, and Med was released to the care of a local institution. When she died two years later, celebration quickly turned to silence, and her story was soon forgotten. As a result, Commonwealth v. Aves is little known outside of legal scholarship. In this book, Karen Woods Weierman complicates Boston's identity as the birthplace of abolition and the cradle of liberty, and restores Med to her rightful place in antislavery history by situating her story in the context of other writings on slavery, childhood, and the law.
Karen Woods Weierman is professor of English at Worcester State University and author of One Nation, One Blood: Interracial Marriage in American Fiction, Scandal, and Law, 1820-1870.
