Portrait of Elizabeth Freeman (“Mumbet”)

Artwork

1811

03.147

Massachusetts Historical Society

A color image of a miniature portrait of Elizabeth Freeman also known as Mumbet. The background of the image is black on the left and slowly becomes more grey as it progress to the right. Freeman is in the center of the image, her body angled slightly to her right, and her eyes looking forward. She is a Black woman with short curly white hair peeking out from under a ruffled white bonnet. Her bonnet wraps all the way around her head and connects underneath her chin. She has a tight white necklace around her neck. She is wearing a blue long sleeve empire waist dress with a white shawl wrapped around the tops of her shoulders and tucked into the dress

Miniature portrait of Elizabeth Freeman, also known as "Mumbet," a former slave who successfully sued her owners for her freedom.

A miniature portrait of Elizabeth Freeman painted by Susan Anne Livingston Ridley Sedgwick in 1811. Exactly thirty years earlier in 1781, Freeman, also known as “Mumbet,” sued the Ashley family, her enslavers, on the grounds that “all men were created free and equal” under the new laws of the state of Massachusetts. Freeman won her case and changed her last name from “Ashley” to “Freeman,” living out the rest of her life as a free woman. Her case was among the first landmark lawsuits challenging slavery in Massachusetts that would eventually contribute to the demise of the slave trade in New England.

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