ST. LOUIS — Sometimes treasures can be found in the strangest places.
For St. Louis Circuit Judge David C. Mason, they were in the basement of his workplace. He found files of "Freedom Suits" back in the ’90s. The files detailed cases from the early to mid-1800s when slaves sued for freedom.
“People who were enslaved would go to court to sue for their civil right to freedom,” Mason said. “These were some of America's very first civil rights lawsuits.”
Most slaves who filed were local. St. Louis was at a crossroads during their era, with slavery to the south and freedom to the north. There were many free blacks working shoulder to shoulder with slaves. It was the perfect place for slaves to take a legal path towards freedom.
“They see that freedom around them, they feel kind of what it's like,” Attorney Paul Venker, said. “They weren’t free but could carry on their business in a mercantile society.”
Roughly 350 cases were filed, only 130 were successful. It was a path to freedom that was just as risky as running away.
“As you can imagine slave masters would often respond with brutality,” Judge Mason said. “In fact, the risk of brutality was so strong, often judges would order slave masters not to touch the slave while in court. One of the worst treatments slaves faced if they lost these lawsuits was being sold to plantations in Louisiana and Mississippi. It was very common to refer to that amongst the slave and free community as 'being sold down the river,' that’s where the saying came from.”
The most famous Freedom Suit is the Dred Scott case filed in 1857. The United States Supreme Court ultimately ruled that slaves who resided in free states were not free and blacks could never be citizens.
“Dooming all Black people in America to be second class slave status,” Mason said. “Literally arguing that slavery was a good thing for us.”
Mason is proud decades of research and hard work to honor the many slaves, witnesses, lawyers and judges is finally coming to fruition. Venker is organizing the efforts for the memorial that will be unveiled on the eastern side of the civic courthouse. He’s the chairman of the board. The Freedom Suit memorial will be unveiled on June 20.
“The City of St. Louis is making a statement to the nation,” Judge Mason said. He’s excited he’s bringing a monument that honors the right side of history to the Show Me State.
The St. Louis Bar Association is still collecting donations for the memorial.