Seeking Justice

The Extraordinary Freedom Suits of an Enslaved Virginia Family

Daniel B. Thorp

• Publisher: University of Virginia Press
• Year: 2025
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9780813953465
• Subtopic: African American History
• Index: History

The amazing story of one illegally enslaved Virginia family’s dauntless legal appeal for freedom

Before the Civil War brought emancipation to the South, some enslaved people managed to use the legal system—the same one that had concocted and long perpetuated their bondage—to sue for their freedom from owners who unlawfully held them in slavery. In Seeking Justice, Daniel Thorp tells the story behind Unis v. Charlton’s Administrator, one of the most extensive of these freedom suits in all of American history.

It began when a woman, known only as Flora, was born in Connecticut and sold into slavery in Virginia. Her children sued, and over more than thirty years, four cases involving almost fifty plaintiffs moved through the Virginia court system before finally reaching a conclusion in 1855. Seeking Justice narrates this remarkable saga, illuminating Black Americans’ legal literacy and shining a light on the unusual permutations of the antebellum judicial world and the courage it took for Flora’s family to plunge into the legal heart of a slave society.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• A Note on Names and Language
• Introduction
• 1. New England Beginnings
• 2. Bound for Virginia
• 3. Virginia Courts and Enslaved Plaintiffs
• 4. The Trials Begin
• 5. A New Legal Strategy
• 6. Back to Christiansburg
• 7. The Court Speaks
• Afterword
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index