Yo, Miss! Office Hours: The Stories They Want to Erase
Elizabeth “Mum Bett” Freeman and Her Fight for Freedom
As the fight over how we teach American history continues to rage—from book bans to whitewashed curriculums to deleting pages from U.S. Government websites—it’s clear we’re witnessing an intentional erasure of the truth by the Trump Administration.
But history doesn’t stop being true just because it makes some people uncomfortable. It becomes even more necessary to preserve and share.
I recently had the chance to talk about this on Make It Make Sense with the brilliant Monique Pressley, where I mentioned the story of Elizabeth “Mum Bett” Freeman—an enslaved woman who used the words of the American Revolution to demand her own freedom. Her story rarely shows up in textbooks, but it should be central to how we understand the promises—and contradictions—on which this country was founded.
So I wanted to tell her full story here—and use it to kick off my new series: Yo, Miss! Office Hours: The Stories They Want to Erase. I’ll be sharing stories like this regularly—maybe weekly, maybe when the mood strikes—but always with the same goal: to reveal the truth they keep trying to erase from the story of America.
Because here’s the thing: I’m going to keep highlighting stories that don’t always make the textbook cut. Stories that reveal the full, complex picture of this country—its ideals and its hypocrisies. Stories that remind us that while the promise of liberty was written into our founding documents, it’s been people like Mum Bett who’ve had to fight to make that promise real.
This isn’t about rewriting history—it’s about revealing it. One story at a time. Because understanding our full and complex history only makes us appreciate this country and what we’ve achieved so far even more.
Yo, Miss! A History Lesson: Elizabeth “Mum Bett” Freeman and the Fight for Freedom
As the American Revolution raged and colonists rallied around cries of liberty and independence, an enslaved woman in Massachusetts dared to ask: What about my freedom? Known as Mum Bett—later Elizabeth Freeman—she was born into slavery in the early 1740s in Claverack, New York. At just 14, she and her sister were “gifted” to John Ashley and his wife Hannah, who brought them to Sheffield, Massachusetts. There, Mum Bett spent decades in servitude—until she heard something that changed everything.
Though illiterate, Mum Bett was always listening. In 1773, she was present when John Ashley hosted a group of white male revolutionaries to draft the Sheffield Declaration. The words they read aloud—"Mankind in a state of nature are equal, free and independent..."—landed hard. These men claimed to oppose tyranny, to resent being treated like slaves. Meanwhile, many of them literally owned slaves. Mum Bett saw the hypocrisy for what it was.
In 1780, Mrs. Ashley raised a heated kitchen shovel to strike Mum Bett’s sister. Mum Bett intervened, taking the blow herself. The deep wound on her arm became her silent protest—she refused to cover it as it healed, forcing everyone to confront her mistreatment. Around that time, Mum Bett heard the Massachusetts Constitution read aloud in the Ashley household, with its bold declaration: "All men are born free and equal..." She took those words seriously—and personally.
With help from lawyer Theodore Sedgwick (who she'd first seen at that fateful 1773 meeting), Mum Bett sued for her freedom in the case Brom and Bett v. Ashley. On August 21, 1781, she won—becoming the first Black woman freed under the new Massachusetts Constitution. Her case laid the legal foundation that ended slavery across the state.
She renamed herself Elizabeth Freeman and went on to live a long, impactful life as a paid servant, healer, midwife, and nurse. She raised her daughter Betsy, protected the Sedgwick home during Shays’ Rebellion, and eventually bought a home of her own in Stockbridge. When she died in 1829, she was buried in the Sedgwick family plot—the only Black person buried there. Her tombstone reads: “She could neither read nor write yet in her own sphere she had no superior or equal... Good mother, farewell.” (Isn’t that amazing?)
Elizabeth Freeman’s courage echoes into our present. Nearly four decades after her death, slavery was abolished in the U.S. with the 13th Amendment. One of her great-grandchildren? W.E.B. Du Bois, one of the most influential civil rights leaders in American history.
We often quote Abigail Adams’ famous letter urging her husband to “remember the ladies.” But Mum Bett—Elizabeth Freeman—fully lived those ideals. Surrounded by white men proclaiming liberty, she demanded it for herself and won. Her story deserves to be remembered and retold—not just during Black History Month, but every time we talk about who this country was really built by... and who it still owes.
This weekend, as people across the country gather for No Kings protests—commemorating the anniversary of the beginning of the American Revolution and standing up against the authoritarianism of the Trump Administration—it’s worth remembering that the fight for freedom in this country has never just been about throwing off a monarch.
It’s always been about expanding who gets to share in that promise of liberty. Elizabeth Freeman’s story reminds us that the ideals written in 1776 weren’t automatically granted to everyone—they had to be demanded.
And they still do.
As Trump tries to crown himself above the law and roll back hard-won rights, we stand with the spirit of Mum Bett: listening, resisting, and refusing to settle for anything less than principles and ideals expressed in our founding documents for everyone in the United States of America.
Little known snapshots of history are a personal favorite! Thank you for sharing!
I have never heard of this woman and I consider myself a student of American history (amateur). What an amazing woman! Thanks Sari!