New book tells untold story of Eliza Winston, an enslaved woman’s battle for freedom in Minnesota

CATHY WURZER: Of course, you know here on the show, we love history, especially Minnesota history. We have the Minnesota Now and Then segment. So let's talk about a little bit of history I bet you don't even know about.

More than 160 years ago here in Minneapolis, a woman named Eliza Winston stood before a judge and won her freedom after spending decades in slavery. Her enslavers were vacationing in Minnesota where she met abolitionists who helped her gain her freedom. In a new book, our next guest points out how historians have paid more attention to those abolitionists than to Winston herself, leaving aside the story of her life before and after her brief but eventful time in Minnesota. That life includes time she spent enslaved by former President Andrew Jackson and efforts she made to get emancipated before ever setting foot in the North.

St. Cloud State University ethnic studies professor Christopher Lehman is the author of the new book, It Took Courage, Eliza Winston's Quest for Freedom, out on April 16th, but he joins us early to talk about this book. Sounds fantastic, Professor. Thank you so much for being with us.

CHRISTOPHER LEHMAN: Thank you.

CATHY WURZER: This is quite a story you have here. Can you tell us, just briefly recap the life of Eliza Winston and the fact that she came to Minnesota and was emancipated?

CHRISTOPHER LEHMAN: Right, well, she was born around 1817. And at the age of five she was sold to John McLemore who was one of Andrew Jackson's best friends and who was the husband of one of Andrew Jackson's wife's nieces. And in 1834, McLemore ran into some financial trouble and had to sell off all his people. But Andrew Jackson stepped in and made sure that the person who bought Eliza kept her until McLemore's youngest daughter was of age and married.

And once Eliza was with that person, Kate McLemore, Kate was willing to have Eliza work outside the house and even socialize outside the house. And she went to a church in Memphis that allowed her to worship with free African-Americans and with people who didn't own slaves at all. So that was her first exposure to freedom. But then Kate died in 1848 and her husband died about four years later. And at that point, Eliza was shipped off to Mississippi.

And it was in Mississippi where she lived on a plantation instead of an urban area and she was caring exclusively for a woman named Mary Christmas. That was actually her name. And it was Mary who became sick in 1860 and chose Eliza to go with her and her husband to Minnesota to vacation. And in 1860, Eliza met a free woman named Emily Grey who developed a plan with her to become free in Minnesota, which--

CATHY WURZER: Or a backup--

CHRISTOPHER LEHMAN: --typically charity was. Go ahead.

CATHY WURZER: I was going to say that. I was wondering going back to where she started to go to church alone, did she at that point marry a free man or was that later?

CHRISTOPHER LEHMAN: No, it was in Memphis where she married a free man and she had developed a plan with her husband and with Kate's husband to work off her freedom, to pay for it through a job as a nurse, I think. And before Eliza and her husband could pay off this enslaver, the husband died and then the enslaver died too. And the Christmases didn't honor the promise that Kate's husband made.

CATHY WURZER: So she had been working to get her freedom since she ended up in Minnesota.

CHRISTOPHER LEHMAN: Right. And there had been some friends of her husband who had acquired some clothing for her in a suitcase or in a trunk for her to wear once she became free in Minnesota. So she took that trunk with her. But when she developed the plan with Emily Grey to be free, while they were in the Twin Cities, someone found out about the plan and then told the Christmases.

And then they decided that they would take Eliza with them away from that hotel and then to a lake house over in Richfield. But her allies were able to track her down. And they were able to consult with the judge to bring her to his court, so that she could plead her case before him. So the Sheriff of Hennepin County went to the lake house, brought Eliza back up to the courthouse in Minneapolis, and there she pleaded her case.

CATHY WURZER: Complicated but interesting, quite interesting. So she was emancipated, yes and--

CHRISTOPHER LEHMAN: Yes.

CATHY WURZER: What happened then?

CHRISTOPHER LEHMAN: When she became free, the Southerners who had been vacationing in Minnesota that summer went in droves to the first steamboat they could back down to the South, so that their enslaved people wouldn't try to go to the courts too. And that same night, people in Minnesota who depended on the tourism dollars of the slaveholders caused a riot. They went to the house of Emily Grey and they went to the house of one of the local abolitionists, his name was William Babbitt.

They weren't able to find Eliza though. She was safe in another abolitionist's home. And she stayed in Minnesota for a couple of months and then I think around November of 1860, she relocated to Detroit. And that's where she spent the rest of her-- the rest of her years in freedom.

CATHY WURZER: Wow! You really pieced together a lot of her story, which is unusual in that it is difficult to find historical records for folks who were living in slavery. So how did you do that?

CHRISTOPHER LEHMAN: Well, the only piece of evidence that was written in Eliza's own words was her affidavit, so what I've tried to do is to see how much of Eliza's story in her own words was accurate. And the first thing she says is that she was kept by a man named McLemore and then his daughter whose married name was Gholson. So I tried to find an ancestry databases, couples who were named McLemore and Gholson, and I found a few.

And I looked at other sources to make sure that that was the right couple. And when I looked at deeds of sales for people who were named Gholson or McLemore, I found the deed that had Andrew Jackson's name on it, which caught me totally by surprise. So then I had to figure out, well, how does McLemore relate to Andrew Jackson and then it just went on from there.

CATHY WURZER: How in the world did you even start down this road? I mean, Eliza's story, as you say, the abolitionist part of the story has been well told, Eliza's not so much. But there's always something that sparks the interest of a researcher, what was it for you?

CHRISTOPHER LEHMAN: Well, it was the fact that she had been kept in Minnesota in slavery even though, legally speaking, she was free. I had not heard of that taking place and so I wanted to learn as much about that as I could. And when I was working on my previous book, Slavery's Reach, that's how I learned about Minnesota having this system of slavery that started when it was a free territory.

And then through the Dred Scott decision in 1857, it was a slave territory, but then Minnesota became a free state. But there had been so much tourism business the year before that Minnesotans decided that they would just not enforce the new free state policy when it came to the tourist. And in 1860, there were two bills that were in the Minnesota House and the Minnesota Senate in which the proposal was for Minnesota to become a slave state only during the tourism months and only for the tourists. But both of those bills failed, but they didn't fail unanimously. So it's in that climate only a few months after that where Eliza Winston and the Christmases come to Minnesota.

CATHY WURZER: Absolutely fascinating. And I know that there were implications of all of these events for Minnesota politics, as well as for Eliza obviously, but for Minnesota politics too.

CHRISTOPHER LEHMAN: That's right. At the time that the Dred Scott decision was passed, Minnesota had people running it who were fairly tolerant of slavery. Even if they didn't want it in Minnesota, they were OK with it existing.

And by the time Minnesota becomes a state, the first governor of Minnesota was working for slaveholders in St. Louis, Missouri. But then there was a new governor who was Republican in 1860 and that scared a lot of Southern Democrats and some of them left Minnesota to go back to the South. And some of them eventually fought Minnesotans in the civil war the following year. So Minnesota politics was very volatile when Eliza came.

CATHY WURZER: Wow! Again, quite a story. Thank you for sharing it.

CHRISTOPHER LEHMAN: Oh, thank you very much.

CATHY WURZER: Christopher Lehman is a professor of ethnic studies at St. Cloud State University, the author of the book, It Took Courage, Eliza Winston's Quest for Freedom.