By Leonard E. Colvin   Chief Reporter   New Journal and Guide  “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of happiness.” Thomas Jefferson, in the lead sentence of the Declaration of American Colonists’ call for “Freedom and Independence” from Britain, appropriated these words from English philosopher John Locke. The rebel colonist adopted a Bill of Rights to a Constitution, which included the freedom to assemble, bear arms and due process, own property, and a trial by peers. But nearly half a million enslaved and free Black Africans who lived among the 1.6 million whites counted in the 1770 Census ran into a wall that deterred them from such privileges. Initially, Blacks resisted this exclusion by using various legal cracks in it. The famous Dred Scott decision is highlighted as an example of Blacks in America using the courts to resist oppression. Scott accompanied his master from Missouri, a slave state, to Illinois and the Wisconsin Territory, where slavery was illegal. When his owner later brought him back to Missouri, Scott sued for his freedom. He claimed he was taken into “free” U.S. territory and was automatically freed. Scott sued first in Missouri state court, which ruled that he was still a slave under its law. He then sued in the U.S. federal court, which ruled against him by deciding that it had to apply Missouri law to the case. He then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court in March 1857 issued the 7-2 decision that people of African descent had no rights a white man had to respect because they were not citizens. According to an article written by Abigail Higgins in March of 2021, the words from 1780 that “all men are born free and equal,” echoed in the small town of Sheffield, Massachusetts. The line was from the state’s newly ratified constitution. There, Elizabeth Freeman, known as “Bett,” a slave, understood the irony as she watched the white men around her declare freedom and she wanted the same 80 years before Scott. Freeman marched, by some accounts, to the house of Theodore Sedgwick, a lawyer, and demanded he represent her in her case to secure it. Sedgwick agreed to represent her in what was called “the trial of the century,” which would rock the entire institution of slavery. “She was kind of the Rosa Parks of her time,” says David Levinson, author along with Emilie Piper of “One Minute a Free Woman,” a book about Freeman. Massachusetts was the first colony to legalize slavery. But state law recognized slaves as property not persons. So, they could prosecute the men who owned them, to prove lawful ownership. By 1780, nearly 30 enslaved people had sued for their freedom based on a variety of technicalities, such as a reneged promise of freedom or an illegal purchase. Freeman did not seek her freedom through a loophole but through her will to resist and abolish the practice of slavery. Freeman was well-known, respected, traveled