One night in January 1773, 11 men gathered in Sheffield, Massachusetts to draft a a treasonous document that declared all mankind have a right to their enjoyment of their lives, their liberty and property.

As the men championed freedom and equality, they were served food by an enslaved black woman called Bett, also known as Mumbett.

Mumbett likely overheard their discussion and took those words to heart.

Less than a decade later, she would wield those same ideals to sue for her freedom and win.

And Mumbett's case is not unique.

This is the story of how the most marginalized people in America have repeatedly expanded rights for everyone by challenging the country to uphold its founding principles.

I'm Harini Bhat, and this is In The Margins.

One year into the Revolutionary War, The Declaration of Independence was signed.

Its words echoing the same sentiment of a universal right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Yet there was a contradiction between writing "all men are created equal" and owning slaves, which the majority of the document's authors did.

Thomas Jefferson's early draft of the Declaration tried to reckon with this tension.

Despite owning slaves himself, he condemned King George for perpetuating the slave trade, which he referred to as an "assemblage of horrors."

But some delegates in the Continental Congress didn't want to mention slavery at all, and the passage was removed.

Still, freedom was on everyone's mind, including the approximately 450,000 enslaved people living in the colonies.

Thousands of enslaved people joined the British Army, taking them up on their promise of freedom in exchange for military service.

Other enslaved people took advantage of the disruptive war time and ran away, finding refuge in indigenous lands or forming maroon communities in secluded areas.

others pursued their freedom in court, like Mumbett in Massachusetts.

One of the earliest freedom suits was filed in 1656.

By 1780, about 30 freedom suits had been argued based on unclear maternal status and other legal technicalities.

That same year, Mumbett was still enslaved by Colonel John Ashley.

One day in the Ashley home, while baking bread for the family, an enslaved girl named Lizzie put a little extra dough in the fire for herself.

This enraged Colonel Ashley's wife, and she went to strike Lizzie with a hot shovel.

Mumbett blocked the blow with her arm, sustaining a serious injury.

Historians say this act of violence sparked Mumbett's fight for freedom.

She marched several miles to the home of attorney Theodore Sedgwick, who was one of the authors of the Sheffield Resolves - that document I mentioned at the start.

She asked him to represent her in a freedom suit.

Sedgwick agreed, and recommended adding an enslaved man, Brom, as a plaintiff to bolster their chances of success.

On August 21st, 1781, the case of Brom and Bett vs. Ashley was heard in court.

Sedgwick argued for their freedom on the basis of the newly established Massachusetts Constitution, which said that all men are born free and equal.

Therefore making slavery inconsistent with the law.

After one day of deliberation, the jury handed Brom and Mumbett a victory, declaring them to be free and ordering Colonel Ashley to pay them each 30 shilling.

Afterwards, Mumbett changed her name to Elizabeth Freeman.

She moved into the Sedgwick family home as a paid housekeeper.

Eventually, Freeman was able to buy her own home and became the second wealthiest black landowner in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

Another key freedom suit was filed in the state in 1781 by an enslaved man named Quock Walker.

Notably, he filed a criminal case against his slave owner, claiming the severe beating he endured should be charged as assault and battery.

Walker's case was appealed all the way to the state Supreme Court.

Convinced by his arguments, the courts ruled in Walker's favor and declared that slavery was unconstitutional, effectively ending the legal practice of slavery in the state of Massachusetts.

However, all enslaved people were not immediately emancipated.

Some slave owners would lie and say they had indentured servants.

Others would sell enslaved people to states where slavery was still legal.

Many free black people were treated as second class citizens, experiencing discrimination that would continue for decades to come.

The freedom suits of this era were primed to succeed as they aligned with the revolution's principles of liberty and equality.

By 1791, Massachusetts reported zero enslaved people in the state, joining three other states in which less than 1% of the population was enslaved.

In the decades after the war, the nation grew rapidly, and the cracks highlighted by Elizabeth Freeman and the other freedom suit victors continued to grow.

In 1821, Missouri became the 24th state.

As part of the Missouri Compromise, it was admitted as a slave state, along with Maine, as a free state, to maintain the delicate balance in Congress.

During this period, more and more enslaved people were seeking their freedom in multiple ways: by escaping to the north through the Underground Railroad, to rebellions, to more freedom suits.

In 1824, the freedom suit Winny v. Whitesides was heard by the Missouri Supreme Court.

The decision established the important precedent of once free, always free.

This meant that if an enslaved person traveled to a free state, they were considered free even if they were brought back to a slave state.

In St. Louis, Missouri, around 300 freedom suits were filed between 1807 and 1860, often citing the once free, always free precedent.

Of the 91 cases that went to trial.

About half were successful.

The early decades of the century are considered the golden age of the freedom suits.

By the 1840s, the nation had become extremely polarized.

In states like Missouri, attitudes toward slavery were hardening.

Pro-slavery judges were appointed to Missouri's Supreme Court, and more frequently ruled against freedom suits, arguing that slavery was reinstituted upon returning to a slave state.

Lawmakers in the state also added restrictions that made it harder to file freedom suits, like requiring enslaved people to pay a bond if their suit wasn't successful.

Then in 1846, an enslaved man named Dred Scott and his wife Harriet filed the most famous freedom suit.

They had traveled with their enslaver from Missouri to the free territory of Wisconsin, and argued for their freedom based on the "once free, always free" precedent, like many before them.

This set off an 11 year legal battle that took their case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Ultimately, in 1857, the court shocked the nation by bucking legal precedent.

It denied Scott's claim and ruled that enslaved people were not U.S. citizens, and thus had no protections under the law.

The outcome of the Scott case stood in sharp contrast to the cases of Brom, Bett, and Walker.

Each case was impacted by the prevailing attitudes of its time, from a slave state defending its grip on slavery, to a northern state promoting its newfound freedom.

The Scott case is considered to be a major tipping point for the Civil War, which broke out just four years later.

Even after fighting a war over the issue, America continued to struggle over who actually could claim the inalienable rights the country was founded on.

In 1865, Congress passed the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery in the United States.

But an exception was carved out, allowing forced labor as a punishment for crime.

A year later, the 14th Amendment was passed.

It extended the liberties in the Bill of Rights to formerly enslaved people, and granted citizenship to those born or naturalized in the US, overturning the Scott decision.

However, the amendment was interpreted to exclude Native Americans who didn't receive citizenship for another 56 years.

Three decades after the 14th Amendment was passed, a man named Wong Kim Ark was denied entry to the U.S after a visit to China.

Officials claimed he wasn't a U.S. citizen, despite being born in San Francisco to Chinese immigrant parents.

Ark challenge the denial of his citizenship based on the 14th amendment, and the Supreme Court sided with him in a 6 to 2 decision.

Justice Horace Gray's majority opinion held that all persons born or naturalized in the United States, regardless of their parent's nationality, are citizens.

This decision was yet another example of the power of the courts to determine whose rights are recognized in America.

Fierce debate over constitutional rights continues to be an important part of the fabric of this country.

Despite being the law of the land for over 127 years, recent attempts have been made to repeal elements of birthright citizenship.

Our rights to freedom and citizenship today have been secured over time, derived from the ideals in our country's founding documents, and won through the constant battle waged by some of the most disenfranchized people in our nation's history.

These cases also enabled enslaved people to shift the power balance, forcing their slave owners to face them in court.

To Elizabeth Freeman, freedom had a deeper meaning that went way beyond physical rewards.

She said, "any time, any time while I was a slave, if one minute's freedom had been offered to me, and I had been told I must die at the end of that minute, I would have taken it.

Just to stand one minute on God's earth, a free woman, I would.