By Victor Omondi
(YourBlackWorld):
The 200-year-old proceedings of abolitionist Sojourner Truth’s quest for the release of her youngest enslaved son, Peter, were discovered buried beneath 5,000 cubic feet of court records at the New York State Archives.
Following the abolitionist’s fight against her previous owner and the Albany Supreme Court, archivist, author, and historian James D. Folts found the 1828 documents, which comprised eight pages of complete court proceedings, CNN reports.
In Truth’s case, a Black lady successfully sued a white man for the freedom of a family member for the first time in history. The records, according to Folts, can help to clarify the history of New York’s slave laws and illustrate the sad realities of slavery in all of the United States’ areas. He also mentions that the documents provide light on some of Peter’s life’s missing and incomprehensible facts, which aids in accuracy.
New York was an important slave harbor for the western world in the 18th century. Despite the fact that Truth was a free woman in the nineteenth century, her five children were still enslaved. Truth’s youngest son, Peter, was an indentured servant to John Dumont, Truth’s former employer in New York, who sold him to Eleazar Gedney of Newburgh, New York, for $20 when he was five years old. Truth subsequently discovered that Solomon Gedney had illegally sold her son to his brother-in-law in Alabama, according to the Three Village Historical Society.
Truth sought legal advice and filed a deposition under her previous name, Isabella Van Wagenen, as soon as she was made aware of the situation. On March 1, 1828, the People v. Solomon Gedney case was filed, citing a Gradual Emancipation Act that emancipated slave children born after July 4, 1799, but indentured them until they were young adults. Peter was born in the year 1818.
As per CNN, the Alabama owner was charged with kidnapping, but court documents revealed that he returned Peter severely beaten.
Along with the official court decision liberating Peter from bondage, the records included a reaction from Peter’s owner in New York.
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