Finding Your Roots

I've long known the name Mum Bett. Hers is a seminal story of African American History. A female slave who demanded her own freedom and hastened the end of slavery in Massachusets. But I had absolutely no idea that an ancestor of Kyra Sedgwick had played any part in this fascinating story. (talking in background) Kyra's father, Harry, told me that Mum Bett was very much a part of their family history. Her portrait even hangs in the foyer of the old Stockbridge Mansion. There is Mum Bett in all her glory. It's amazing to have an image of a black person. A likeness. She was a very strong woman, at least from everything I can determine. In terms of history, she was a lot more interesting (laughing) than any of the Sedgwick family, which is fine with us. (somber cello) The story of Mum Bett comes down to us from Theodore's daughter, Catherine, who wrote about her in 1853. Catherine describes the night that Mum-Bett's master's wife threatened to beat another slave, a girl named Lizzy, who many believe was Mum Bett's daughter. "She seized a large iron shovel red-hot from cleaning the oven, and raised it over the terrified girl. Bett interposed her brawny arm and took the blow. It cut quite across the arm to the bone. But, she would say afterwards, in concluding the story of the frightful scar she carried to her grave, Madame never again laid her hand on Lizzy." Catherine also tells the story of the day Mum Bett heard a reading of the new Declaration of Independence at the Sheffield Town Hall. "It was soon after the close of the Revolutionary War that she, Bett, chanced at the Village Meeting House in Sheffield to hear the Declaration of Independence read. She went the next day to the office of Mr. Theodore Sedgwick, then in the beginning of his honorable political career, Sire, said she, I heard that paper read yesterday that says all men are born equal and that every man has a right to freedom. I am not a dumb critter! Won't the law give me my freedom?" Right on! (Laughs) So, it was her idea. It was her idea. Needless to say. Yeah, right, exactly! But just from hearing the Declaration of Independence. Yeah! Now, you talk about chutzpah? That's chutzpah! And plus, I like the fact that she even, even though it says, all men, it doesn't say women too, she still included herself in that. And she said, "I'm not a dumb critter!" That's right. Not a dumb critter. Love that. (upbeat banjo) Despite his close friendship with Mum Bett's owner, John Ashley, Theodore decided to take her case. But he was impressed, I think, with her argument. He had to have been impressed by her personality. And that trial was, in that part of the world, the Trial of the Century. Many slaves in Massachusetts had petitioned for their freedom and lost, but Theodore decided to try a novel approach, putting forth an argument that challenged the institute of slavery itself. What's remarkable about the argument that your fourth great-grandfather made is that he didn't look for a loop-hole or some special circumstance that would oblige Ashley to set her free. Rather, he acted on the assumption that since all men were born free and equal, as stated in the state's brand new constitution, then nobody in Massachusetts could be held in slavery. Nobody. Wow. There were very few people in the United States who were making that argument at that time. It was a radical position. -

Kyra

Wow. A really radical position. There were a lot of people who thought that slaves should be freed, yes, eventually. -

Kyra

Right. They were called gradual emancipationists. Right. But he went for the jugular. -

Kyra

Right. And he said "if the first is true, then in has to be true for these black people." Right. -

Henry

That's a pretty heavy thing. That is. And he won. Amazing. (guitar) On August 21, 1781, after weighing Theodore's persuasive arguments, a jury of 12 local farmers, all white, all male, granted Mum Bett her freedom. The first thing Mum Bett did was to change her name. Now a free woman, she became Elizabeth Freeman and came to work as a paid servant for Theodore in the old house in Stockbridge, helping to raise his seven children.