Belinda Sutton and the Harvard School of Law
By
John C Abercrombie
Today is day 31 of the 31-day tribute to Black women, but fortunately not the last. We continue to feature women in our posts and return to our regular weekly posting on subjects involving people, places and events affecting Black life. These posts are NOT only for Black people because we are a diverse nation, and it helps all of us if we share the opportunities that come with it. Holding one segment of the society down comes at great price. Acknowledging the accomplishments of all is primary to continued success.
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Today’s post features Belinda Sutton and speaks to the connection of her owner and Harvard School of Law. Many institutions and businesses owe their origin and prosperity to slavery and may surprise you.
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To see the post with links to all 31 women, click this link.
While this post focuses on Belinda Sutton and Harvard University, there are many large institutions that owe their founding to slavery.
Slavery was the largest profit-making enterprise the world has ever seen, bigger than Wall Street, in fact Wall Street was a Slave Market before it was a Financial Center. Some businesses that owe their success to slavery.
- Lehman Brothers
- Aetna, Inc.
- JPMorgan Chase
- New York Life.
- Wachovia Corporation
- N M Rothschild & Sons Bank in London.
- Norfolk Southern
- E.W. Scripps and Gannett.
- FleetBoston
- CSX
- Canadian National Railway Company.
- Brown Brothers Harriman.
- Brooks Brothers
- Barclays
- AIG
Several major American universities have made efforts in the past year to acknowledge their historical ties to slavery, digging into their archives and publishing reports on the various ways their institutions benefited from the slave trade.
Georgetown, Rutgers, Columbia, Harvard, and Brown are among the universities that have recently published reports on their connections to slavery. The latest example came with the release of the Princeton and Slavery Project, a research endeavor investigating the Ivy League university’s involvement in slavery. The project uncovered records of slave ownership by university leaders and details about a slave auction on campus.
Davidson College has just acknowledged a connection to slavery and will be in a future post.
Such findings reflect a truth, long ignored, about American institutions of higher education. “The academy never stood apart from American slavery—in fact, it stood beside church and state as the third pillar of a civilization built on bondage,”
Belinda Sutton was born in Ghana, located in West Africa, and enslaved by the Royall family.
The official name of Ghana is the Republic of Ghana. A country located in West Africa on the Gulf of Guinea with the Atlantic Ocean to the South. Ghana shares its borders with the Ivory Coast to the West, Burkina Faso to the North and Togo to the East. The country consists of diverse biomes such as the Coastal savannas to the tropical rainforests. It has over 32 million inhabitants today and is the second most populous country in West Africa after Nigeria with over 211,000,000 inhabitants. The capital of Ghana is Accra. Other major cities are Kumasi, Tamale, and Sekondi-Takoradi.
The woman we know as Belinda Sutton is also known as Belinda Royall. As she was at one time owned by the Royall family. Isaac Royall, Jr. was the largest slaveholder in Massachusetts during the 18th century and accrued his wealth through the enslaved labor of those enslaved persons. He also made possible the creation of Harvard Law School. The family estate is located in Medford, Massachusetts and is now a museum and historic site. The property includes the only surviving freestanding slave quarters in the Northern United States.
Isaac Royall, Jr was the son of the slave trader and planter Isaac Royall. He elder Royall moved to Antigua in 1700 to establish a slave-labor plantation. He made his fortune trading enslaved people also dabbling in run and sugar trading.
Isaac was born on the island in 1719. When he was 17 years of age, Antigua carried out a brutal wave of punishments in anticipation of an uprising by enslaved workers. 132 were convicted and 88 executed. Five by being broken on the wheel.
When a person was condemned to death, those convicted of certain atrocities were sometimes condemned to be broken on the wheel in a public execution. Sometimes after being broken on the wheel, blows were also given on the chest or the abdomen of the condemned person. These blows were called coups de grâce, or in other words, “blows of mercy,” as they were fatal to the condemned. If these blows were not given, a condemned person might live for hours or days, and they might be subject to birds pecking at them until they died. In addition, on occasion, a special grace, known as the retentum, was granted where a condemned person was strangled after the second or third blow, or in special cases, even before the breaking began.
“The executed individuals were held in bondage by a total of 60 different individuals and estates,” including one man owned by Royall’s father. When Hector was burned at the stake, “Isaac Royall Sr. received £70 in compensation for his loss.
This shows the brutality that was inflicted on human beings by other human beings. Savagery is an ugly reflection on humanity.
Belinda Sutton a Ghanaian-born woman who was enslaved by the Royall family at the Royall House and Slave Quarters in Medford, Massachusetts, USA. Additional details of Sutton’s family life are under ongoing research. Baptism records for a son Joseph, and a daughter Prine, appear in church records. Belinda was abandoned by, Isaac Royall Jr., when he fled to Nova Scotia at the beginning of the American Revolution.
In Royall’s will, a number of enslaved people are listed, but Belinda was unique in his wishes. “In his will he gave his slave Belinda the option of freedom, and he further ‘provided that she get security that she shall not be a charge in the town of Medford.’ If she did not elect freedom, he bequeathed her to his daughter Mary Erving. Other slaves were bequeathed, and some were sold, but Belinda was emancipated.”
In February 1783, Sutton presented a petition to the Massachusetts General Court requesting a pension from the proceeds of her enslaver’s estate. The vivid petition text was crafted to describe Belinda’s kidnapping in Africa and subsequent hardships and to condemn the practice of slavery. Some scholars suggest that she was assisted by Prince Hall, a local free Black man and anti-slavery activist of the Revolutionary War era. Other scholars point to the wider Black community and the collective knowledge of prior legal cases in the Commonwealth. The first petition request suggests that Sutton was the major supporter of her daughter:
“She prays, that such allowance may have made her out of the Estate of Colonel Royall, as will prevent her, and her more infirm daughter, from misery in the greatest extreme, and scatter comfort over the short and downward path of their lives”
As a result of this petition, an annual pension of fifteen pounds and twelve shillings was awarded to her and approved by John Hancock. This pension has been cited as one of the first cases of reparation for slavery and the slave trade.
In the 1788 petition, she is referred to as a “widow” and used the last name Sutton.
Subsequent petitions to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts indicate that after two initial payments, the pension payments were not forthcoming. She continued to petition for the back payments until a final filing in 1793. Later legal documents refer to the Royall servants’ deaths having transpired, but when and under what circumstances remain unknown at this time.
In his will of 1779, Royall left land to Harvard College to establish the first professorship in law at the school. This bequest led to the founding of Harvard Law School in 1817. In 1936, to celebrate the university’s tercentenary, Harvard alumnus and former English professor Pierre de Chaignon la Rose drew seals for each of Harvard’s graduate schools. For Harvard Law School, la Rose adopted Royall’s coat of arms, a blue shield adorned with three sheaves of wheat. This seal was adopted by the Harvard Corporation.
In 2016, the seal became the object of controversy, given Royall’s prominence as the largest slaveholder in Massachusetts and the owner of a Caribbean slave-labor plantation. Students under the name “Royall Must Fall” (fashioned after the Rhodes Must Fall Movement) organized to have the seal removed. After several racist incidents within the Law School community, Law School Dean Martha L. Minow was pressured by students to create a committee of students, faculty, staff, and alumni to recommend whether to change the seal. In 2016, Harvard Law School officially decided to scrap the seal that contained Royall’s arms.
America seems to have a fascination with promoting racist images in the face of those who find it so objectionable. Many are innocent because we have not been exposed to the truth in our history. Others may have a more sinister look at it. The past has gone, the future is yet to come, but today we can do what is necessary to guarantee that the future is smoother and more successful. The best way to continue on the path of self-destruction is for good people to do nothing.
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Our mission is to provide those historical facts that have been omitted from history. Believing that America is strong because of contributions by all groups and individuals.
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Belinda Sutton Distinguished Lecture: What’s So Hard About Hard Histories?
Professor Martha S. Jones delivered the inaugural Belinda Sutton Distinguished Lecture at Harvard Law School, titled “What’s So Hard About Hard Histories?” Jones is the Society of Black Alumni Presidential Professor, Professor of History, Professor at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University.
The Belinda Sutton Distinguished Lecture features speakers and topics that advance our understanding of the legacy of slavery and the pursuit of racial justice. The event is co-hosted by the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard Law School.
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PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
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Belinda Sutton & the Royalls of Medford, MA
This video shares the story of Belinda Sutton, a woman from Africa who was enslaved and petitioned for reparations from her enslavers- the Royals. The Royalls were one of the largest slave holding families in Massachusetts.
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In today’s class Blakk Rasta tells the story of Belinda Sutton in the African History Class
Belinda Sutton also known as Belinda Royall, was a Ghanaian-born woman who was enslaved by the Royall family at the Isaac Royall House and Slave Quarters in Medford, Massachusetts, USA.
She was abandoned by, Isaac Royall Jr., when he fled to Nova Scotia at the beginning of the American Revolution. In Royall’s will, a number of enslaved people are listed, but Belinda was unique in his wishes.
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MSNBC legal commentator Elie Mystal thinks that Republicans are wrong about the law almost all of the time. Now, instead of talking about this on cable news, Mystal explains why in his first book.
“After reading Allow Me to Retort, I want Elie Mystal to explain everything I don’t understand – quantum astrophysics, the infield fly rule, why people think Bob Dylan is a good singer….” (Michael Harriot, The Root)
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The Ballad of Belinda Sutton (live at The Porch 01/08/2022)
Belinda Sutton was an amazing woman who was the first known formerly enslaved person to petition for money (we might call it reparations) to compensate her for her years of enslavement at the hands of the family of Isaac Royall of Medford, Massachusetts. Her historic petition is one of the earliest accounts of the life of an enslaved woman in the U.S. and she actually won her petition to the Massachusetts Legislature.
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This dual biography of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King upends longstanding preconceptions to transform our understanding of the 20th century’s most iconic African American leaders.
To most Americans, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. represent contrasting ideals: self-defense vs. nonviolence, Black power vs. civil rights, the sword vs. the shield.
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Clyde Ross and Belinda Sutton
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Belinda’s Petition
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Other posts of interest
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Voting – Gerrymandering Explained, This post
For Black History Month 2020, we posted daily. These posts focus on the reality of Black life in America after the Civil War culminating in the landmark Brown v Board of Education that changed so many of the earlier practices. To see the posts, click here
For Black History Month 2021, we focused on Black Medical Achievements, Inventors and Scientists. To see those posts, click here.
For Black History Month 2022 we focused on “Health and Wellness”. To see the entire series, click this link.
For Women’s History Month 2022 we introduced you to 31 amazing Black women we should all know. To see the entire series, click this link.
We also posted a 5 part mini-series on the 100th anniversary of one of the most horrific massacres in the history of America. Hundreds of Blacks were slaughtered and 10,000 left homeless in this largely unknown event. To see the posts, click here.
We also did a mini-series on the Schomburg Center for Research a most amazing collection of Black history and culture. To see this mini-series, click here
The Schomburg Center
A world class collection of Black History inspired by a 5th grade teacher who told Arturo Schomburg that there was NO African history. Nothing of value. Schomburg dedicated his life to proving that teacher wrong and Schomburg did an amazing job with his collection.
Schomburg – The man who built a library
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Some other posts that may be of interest
To see the full listing of post (over 300 and counting), click on our Blog list
Current Mini-series on voting
**
Voting Tutorial – Click this important link
Voting – Voter Suppression – Click this important link
Voting – Gerrymandering Explained, This post
For Black History Month 2020, we posted daily. These posts focus on the reality of Black life in America after the Civil War culminating in the landmark Brown v Board of Education that changed so many of the earlier practices. To see the posts, click here
For Black History Month 2021, we focused on Black Medical Achievements, Inventors and Scientists. To see those posts, click here.
For Black History Month 2022 we focused on “Health and Wellness”. To see the entire series, click this link.
For Women’s History Month 2022 we introduced you to 31 amazing Black women we should all know. To see the entire series, click this link.
We also posted a 5 part mini-series on the 100th anniversary of one of the most horrific massacres in the history of America. Hundreds of Blacks were slaughtered and 10,000 left homeless in this largely unknown event. To see the posts, click here.
We also did a mini-series on the Schomburg Center for Research a most amazing collection of Black history and culture. To see this mini-series, click here
The Schomburg Center
A world class collection of Black History inspired by a 5th grade teacher who told Arturo Schomburg that there was NO African history. Nothing of value. Schomburg dedicated his life to proving that teacher wrong and Schomburg did an amazing job with his collection.
Schomburg – The man who built a library
To comment or make suggestions on future posts, use Contact Us
**
In the post on Belinda Sutton, we are introduced to the concept of success in America with connections to slavery. Afterall, slavery represented more value than the factories and railroads in the North. It stands to reason that although we do not talk about it that the institution of slavery would have a lasting effect on business and industry of the country.
Many of the factories in the North were supported by the slave industry. Ship building to bring enslaved people to our shores, factories to make clothing and other items required to maintain slavery were so prevalent that New York considered succession because so much of their industry was supported by the institution of slavery.
It is now time to recognize the extent that the horrors of slavery permeate our society today. It is no longer acceptable to continue to sweep it under the rug. It is time to face the past so we can solve the problems and insure a better future for all!
The best way to insure that evil prevails is for good people to say nothing.