Roughly Speaking

Martha Jones, a professor of history at Johns Hopkins University, has performed a great service -- dusting off records and throwing open the windows of the old Baltimore courthouse to show how, in the decades before the Civil War, free blacks used the law to gain a foothold as citizens. By the 1830s, Baltimore was home to the nation’s largest free-black community. While some 25,000 former slaves and free-born blacks lived and worked in the city, their rights were greatly restricted by so-called “black laws.” So they studied the laws, hired white attorneys to help them, and presented their everyday legal matters -- contract disputes, permit requests -- to judges. They found in the courthouse a way to conduct themselves as citizens and exercise fundamental rights. Extracting stories from 19th Century court records in the Maryland State Archives, Jones shows how, in the face of the 1857 Dred Scott decision, free blacks continued to assert what they saw as their birthright, the first steps on the way to the Fourt