From the Darkness Cometh the Light, or Struggles for Freedom

Description

During the hardships of obtaining emancipation, Mr. and Mrs. John Woods and Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Posey shared one home in the State of Illinois. Residing with Mrs. Posey was a young black girl, with the name Polly Crocket, who made herself comfortable there, living with bliss and tranquility, for 5 delightful years. On a disappointing evening in September, Polly, with the other 2 couples, were abducted, and, after being safely destined and interdicted, were placed into a canoe and taken transversely to the Mississippi River to St. Louis. Soon after, these ill-fated blacks were brought across the Missouri River and ordered to become slaves. Polly was bought by a prior. Thomas Botts, with whom she lived for 12 months, when, surpassed by mercantile setbacks, he was required to vend all he owned, as well as the blacks.

Lucy Ann Delaney, born as Lucy Berry, was an African-American writer, a freed slave, and activist, remarkable for her 1891 chronicle From the Darkness Cometh the Light, or, Struggles for Freedom. This is the singular first individual narrative of a “freedom suit” and among some of the post-Emancipation circulated servitude accounts.

The biography recalls her mother Polly Berry’s lawful skirmishes in St. Louis, Missouri for her own and her daughter’s liberation from servitude. In the lawsuit of her daughter, Berry gained the sympathy of Edward Bates, an honorable Whig statesman and judge, and the forthcoming United States Attorney General under President Abraham Lincoln. He debated the litigation of Lucy Ann Berry in court and won the case in February 1844. Their lawsuits were two of 301 emancipation cases filed in St. Louis between 1814 and 1860. Founded in the last years of 20th century, the legal files are kept by the Missouri Historical Society and can be found through the internet.
[amz_corss_sell asin=”1776729811″]