Enlightened Free Thinking Nubian Kings And Queens

Elizabeth Grimstead was one of the first women of  African  ancestry in the North American colonies to sue for her freedom from  slavery  and win. Elizabeth Key won her freedom and that of her infant son John Grinstead on July 21, 1656 in the colony of Virginia. She sued based on the fact that her father was an Englishman and that she was a  baptized   Christian . Based on these two factors, her English attorney and common-law husband William Grinstead argued successfully that she should be freed. The lawsuit in 1655 was one of the earliest " freedom suits " by a person of African ancestry in the English colonies. In response to Key's suit and other challenges, in 1662 the  Virginia House of Burgesses  passed a law that the status of children born in the colony would follow the status of the mother, "bond or free", rather than the father, as had been the precedent in English  common law  and was the case in England. This was the...

     Sue Bertha Coleman's mother was working as a cook for a Huntsville, Alabama family when she decided her daughter should have a college education, something few Alabama women received at the turn of the century.      Coleman graduated from Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. She began her career as principal of a Tennessee Coal and Iron Company (TCI) school at Muscoda, a large ore mining camp near Bessemer, Alabama. At the end of her third year, she remained on the company's payroll to conduct social work, Coleman was designated as a community supervisor in charge of social services for black miners and their families. Initiative and dedication set her apart from her peers. In 1918, she borrowed $300 from a bank, left her husband in charge of their children, and went to Chicago to study with Jane Addams, the most noted social worker of the day.      On her return, Coleman took over a schedule of regular weekly duties at the "Co...