Seeking Justice: The Extraordinary Freedom Suits of an Enslaved Virginia Family

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.

Daniel B. Thorp is Associate Professor of History at Virginia Tech and the author of In the True Blue’s Wake: Slavery and Freedom among the Families of Smithfield Plantation.