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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Eight: The Lemmon Slave Case and the Fight for Freedom

The Eight: The Lemmon Slave Case and the Fight for Freedom

Rosenblatt, Albert M.

Paperback

Series: Excelsior Editions

19th Century United States HistoryBlack American StudiesRegional: Middle Atlantic

ISBN10: 1438492642
ISBN13: 9781438492643
Publisher: Excelsior Editions/State University of New Yo
Published: Apr 1 2023
Pages: 266
Weight: 0.87
Height: 0.60 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Awards: Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards

The personal and legal struggle of eight enslaved people for freedom in New York in the period just before the Civil War.

Gold Winner of the 2023 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award in the History category

The Eight tells the story of Lemmon v. New York-or, as it's more popularly known, the Lemmon Slave Case. All but forgotten today, it was one of the most momentous civil rights cases in American history. There had been cases in which the enslaved had won their freedom after having resided in free states, but the Lemmon case was unique, posing the question of whether an enslaved person can win freedom by merely setting foot on New York soil-when brought there in the keep of an owner. The case concerned the fates of eight enslaved people from Virginia, brought through New York in 1852 by their owners, Juliet and Jonathan Lemmon. The Eight were in court seeking, legally, to become people-to change their status under law from objects into human beings. The Eight encountered Louis Napoleon, the son of a slave, an abolitionist activist, and a conductor of the Underground Railroad, who took enormous risks to help others. He was part of an anti-slavery movement in which African-Americans played an integral role in the fight for freedom. The case was part of the broader judicial landscape at the time: If a law was morally repugnant but enshrined in the Constitution, what was the duty of the judge? Should there be, as some people advocated, a higher law that transcends the written law? These questions were at the heart of the Lemmon case. They were difficult and important ones in the 1850s-and, more than a century and a half later, we must still grapple with them today.

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