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Statue planned in Berkshires for 18th century woman who sued for and won her freedom from slavery

New England Public Media | By Nancy Eve Cohen
Published November 26, 2021 at 12:22 PM EST
Elizabeth Freeman is buried in the Sedgwick family plot in the Stockbridge, Massachusetts, cemetery.
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Nancy Eve Cohen / NEPM
Miniature portrait of Elizabeth Freeman, a watercolor on ivory by Susan Anne Livingston Ridley Sedgwick, 1811, in gilded wood frame. The painter was the wife of the son of Theodore Sedgwick, the lawyer who represented Elizabeth Freeman in her lawsuit for her freedom.
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Miniature portrait of Elizabeth Freeman, a watercolor on ivory by Susan Anne Livingston Ridley Sedgwick, 1811, in gilded wood frame. The painter was the wife of the son of Theodore Sedgwick, the lawyer who represented Elizabeth Freeman in her lawsuit.
Collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society / Collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society

A statue is planned for the Berkshires depicting an 18th century Black woman who was once enslaved and who sued for her freedom and won.

Bett, later known as Mumbet and even later as Elizabeth Freeman, was enslaved in Sheffield, Massachusetts, in the mid 1700s.

The woman who enslaved Freeman hit her with a shovel from the fireplace. So Mumbet walked to the house of lawyer Theodore Sedgwick, whom she had previously overheard discussing equality, and asked for a lawsuit for her freedom.

She won the case.

State Rep. Smitty Pignatelli said Mumbet was a game-changer and that a statue is long overdue. 

"Before Rosa Parks and before Sojourner Truth, there was Mumbet," Pignatelli said. "We need to celebrate her."

Pignatelli said the statue will be unveiled in Sheffield in August, but first he said at least $200,000 must be raised to pay for it. 

Pignatelli also wants to establish a college scholarship named after Freeman.
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Regional News HISTORYWESTERN MASSACHUSETTS
Nancy Eve Cohen
Nancy Eve Cohen is a former NEPM senior reporter whose investigative reporting has been recognized with an Edward R. Murrow Regional Award for Hard News, along with awards for features and spot news from the Public Media Journalists Association (PMJA), American Women in Radio & Television and the Society of Professional Journalists.

She has reported on repatriation to Native nations, criminal justice for survivors of child sexual abuse, linguistic and digital barriers to employment, fatal police shootings and efforts to address climate change and protect the environment. She has done extensive reporting on the EPA's Superfund cleanup of the Housatonic River.

Previously, she served as an editor at NPR in Washington D.C., as well as the managing editor of the Northeast Environmental Hub, a collaboration of public radio stations in New York and New England.

Before working in radio, she produced environmental public television documentaries. As part of a camera crew, she also recorded sound for network television news with assignments in Russia, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba and in Sarajevo during the war in Bosnia.
See stories by Nancy Eve Cohen
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