Mum Bett: How One Black Woman’s Lawsuit Helped End Slavery In Massachusetts

Mum Bett: How One Black Woman’s Lawsuit Helped End Slavery In Massachusetts

Before Harriet Tubman led enslaved people to freedom and long before Rosa Parks sat down on a Montgomery bus, there was Mum Bett — a woman whose courage in a Massachusetts courtroom in 1781 shook the legal foundation of slavery in America. Known later as Elizabeth Freeman, she became the first Black woman in the United States to sue for her freedom and win, a decision that would ripple far beyond her own life and help end slavery in Massachusett…