Slew, Jenny

Source:

 African American National Biography

Slew, Jenny

(1719–?),

slave who sued for freedom, was born to a white mother and a father of African descent, most likely a slave. Slew lived as a free woman until 1762, marrying several times. At the age of forty-three she was forcefully kidnapped from her Massachusetts home and enslaved by John Whipple Jr.

Three years after her capture Slew filed a civil suit, Jenny Slew, Spinster, versus John Whipple, Jr., Gentleman, against her would-be master, asserting through her counsel that as a child's legal status follows that of the mother, she was, like her white mother, a free woman. Though at the time most colonies denied slaves legal protection, Massachusetts allowed an enslaved individual, though still recognized as property, to bring a civil suit. As one of the first slaves to sue for freedom, Slew faced a panel of judges who had no precedent to follow. She accidentally filed her complaint in the incorrect jurisdiction, the Inferior Court of Common Pleas in Newburyport, which dismissed her petition on the grounds that, since Slew had been married, “Jenny Slew, Spinster,” did not exist. Ironically, the assertion that Slew's marriages were legally significant implied that she truly was free. After losing the case, Slew was required to pay court costs.

Though the inferior court ruled in Whipple's favor, Slew continued to seek justice. In 1766 she submitted an appeal to the superior court, where she faced a trial by jury. The jury, though its members' names are not recorded, would have been composed of Whipple's peers: white “Gentlemen.” The contested points were the same in both proceedings. Whipple asserted that Slew was unable to prove her right to liberty and that he possessed a bill of sale for her purchase. Even more importantly, however, he argued that as a married woman Slew's legal rights were nonexistent, subsumed under the authority of her husband, and that thus she lacked the right or ability to sue him. However, several factors complicated his argument. First, Slew was not married at the time of the trials. Second, and more significant, her marriages had all been to enslaved men and were thus legally questionable; Massachusetts, under a 1706 antimiscegenation statute, refused to legitimate marriages where one or both members of the couple were slaves. Thus, in contradiction of the earlier ruling, Slew was deemed a “spinster,” independent and able to bring suit against Whipple. Ironically, her identity as a slave granted her a recourse to the law that she lacked as a woman.

The superior court ruled in her favor, granting Slew freedom and awarding her court costs as well as damages of four pounds. Slew may be the first person held as a slave granted rightful freedom through trial by jury. Her suit was followed by those of other slaves who sued for freedom, from Mum Bett (later Elizabeth Freeman), whose 1781 case resulted in freedom, to Dred Scott's unsuccessful suit of 1856 and subsequent appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, which was met by the court's devastating 1857 decision denying blacks citizenship.

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