Resource for Remarkable Colonial African American Women, slide #5

In 1735, a girl was captured from her home in Africa and brought to Deerfield, Massachusetts, to be enslaved by Mr. and Mrs. Wells. The man who first bought her gave her the new name of Lucy Terry.  He didn’t care what her African name was. She was 5 years old. She had to work for Mr. and Mrs. Wells, but Mrs. Wells thought it was important that Lucy learn to read and write too. When she was 16, Indigenous warriors attacked and killed some Deerfield people while they were working in their farm fields. These people lived in Lucy’s community, and she was very upset about what had happened, so she wrote a poem about the attack. She was a very good storyteller, and she told her poem to those around her for many years. It didn’t get printed until after she died.

Lucy fell in love with a free Black man named Abijah (a-BYE-zha) Prince. He worked hard to save money to buy her freedom. Once she was free, they married and moved to Guilford, Vermont. Some of their White neighbors didn’t like having the Prince family next door because they were Black. These neighbors were mean to the Princes, so Lucy asked the governor of Vermont for help. He ordered the leaders of Guilford to protect the Prince family.

Deerfield people who knew Lucy said that one of her sons wanted to go to the brand-new Williams College, but leaders at the school would not let him be a student there because he was Black. They only wanted White students. Lucy asked for a special meeting with them. People say that she spoke to the leaders of the college for 3 hours about why her son should be allowed to be a student there. Unfortunately, the leaders did not agree with Lucy and her son never got to go to the new Williams College.

Another neighbor of Lucy’s tried to say that part of the Prince’s farm really belonged to him. This time the problem had to be settled by the most important court in Vermont, the Vermont State Supreme Court. Lucy argued with these men, and the judge and his court decided that the Princes were right, and the neighbor did not own part of their farm. The judge of this important court said that Lucy did a better job of fighting for her land than any lawyer in Vermont could have done! Also, going to court and speaking out as Lucy did were things women, even White women, did not usually do. That was considered a man’s job. Everybody was very impressed with what Lucy had done!

Vocabulary

College – after a student finishes high school, they can go to college, but they must pay for it.

Court, judge, lawyer – if somebody breaks a law or can’t agree with somebody else about something important, they go to court, where a group of people called the “jury” listen to each person’s story about what happened and then they decide who was telling the truth, or what should happen next.  The people who tell the stories to the jury are called lawyers.  The judge is like a boss of the court.  The judge tells the person who did something wrong what their punishment will be, or he or she tells the people who don’t agree what they should do.

Governor – the boss of a state

Poem – a way of writing that doesn’t have sentences. A poem is made up of lines of writing and sometimes the words at the end of some lines rhyme. Here’s an example of a poem:

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall;

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men

Couldn’t put Humpty together again.