In 1656, She Sued for Her Freedom — and Won

In 1656, a woman named Elizabeth Key sued for her freedom in colonial Virginia and won. A jury ruled in her favor. The General Assembly backed the verdict. She walked free. Six years later, the same legislature passed a law ensuring no one could win that way again. The act of 1662 made slavery hereditary through the mother, replacing the English rule that followed the father. Her case showed the colony where its old rules leaked, and the statute was cut to fit the leak. 0:00 The Inventory and the Two Lists 3:27 A Father's Agreement, 1636 6:53 The Case: Three Arguments from English Law 11:53 The Assembly Reverses the Governor's Court 15:52 December 1662: Partus Sequitur Ventrem 19:27 What Her Grandchildren Inherited 21:25 When a Verdict Cannot Be Overturned Sources: Taunya Lovell Banks — 'Dangerous Woman: Elizabeth Key's Freedom Suit — Subjecthood and Racialized Identity in Seventeenth Century Colonial Virginia' (1999) — https://www.jstor.org/stable/1602739 Warren M. Billings — 'The Cases of Fernando and Elizabeth Key: A Note on the Status of Blacks in Seventeenth-Century Virginia' (1972) — https://www.jstor.org/stable/1918194 Digital History, University of Houston — 'The African American Population in Colonial Virginia' — https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/dis... BlackPast — 'Elizabeth Key Grinstead (1630–1665)' — https://www.blackpast.org/african-ame... Virginia Places — 'Population of Virginia' — https://www.virginiaplaces.org/popula... William Waller Hening — 'The Statutes at Large; Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia' (1823), Volume 2 — https://archive.org/details/statutesa... Northumberland County Court Records, 1652–1665 — https://www.lva.virginia.gov/ #colonialhistory #virginiahistory #slavery #legalhistory