Elizabeth Key Grinstead

Elizabeth Key Grinstead (or Greenstead) ( – 1665) was one of the first mixed race people in the Thirteen Colonies to sue for freedom from slavery and win. Key won her freedom and that of her infant son, John Grinstead, on July 21, 1656, in the Colony of Virginia.

Key based her suit on two connected arguments: her father's status as a free English man and her status as an indentured servant. Key's father was an Englishman who had acknowledged her and baptized her as a Christian in the American branch of the Church of England. He was a wealthy planter who had tried to protect her by establishing a guardianship for her when she was young, before his death. This guardianship outlined that her father gave Key away on an indenture which was supposed to end when she turned 15, but this agreement had expired well before the time of the suit. This law differed from English common law, in which children's social status was determined by their fathers, who had an obligation to support both legitimate and illegitimate children. Virginia and other colonies incorporated a principle known as partus sequitur ventrem or partus, relating to chattel property. The legislation hardened the boundaries of slavery by ensuring that all children born to enslaved women, regardless of paternity or proportion of European ancestry, would be born into slavery unless explicitly freed.

Early life and education

Key, sometimes spelled Kaye, was born in 1630 or 1632 in Warwick County, Virginia. Thomas Key's legal white wife lived across the James River in Isle of Wight County, Virginia, where she owned considerable property. Born in England, the Keys were considered pioneer planters as they had come to Virginia before 1616, remained for more than three years, paid their passage, and survived the Indian massacre of 1622.

Around 1636, in a civic case at Blunt Poynt court, Thomas Key was charged with fathering the mixed-race Elizabeth Key. Initially, he denied the charge. Complaints about illegitimate children were brought to court so that fathers would be required to provide support for those children, under English common law, including arranging for apprenticeships so that they could learn skills necessary for their livelihood.

Thomas Key first said an unidentified "Turk" was Elizabeth's father, but the Court relied on witnesses who testified to his paternity. Thomas Key took responsibility for Elizabeth, arranging for her baptism in the established Church of England and supporting her financially. Sometime before his death that same year (1636), Thomas placed Elizabeth (then aged six) in the custody of Humphrey Higginson for a nine-year indenture.

Banks said Jurnew's testimony had the most significant effect on the court's decision. The colonists would not have granted Turks the same rights as themselves, as they were not Christian.

Through Grinstead, Elizabeth Key took the case to the Virginia General Assembly, which appointed a committee to investigate. They sent the case back to the courts for retrial. Elizabeth Key finally won her freedom on three counts: the most important was that by English common law, the father's status determined the child's status. Her father was a free Englishman, and she was a practicing Christian. In other cases, the courts had ruled that (black) Negro or Indian Christians could not be held in servitude for life.

Aftermath

As a result of the Elizabeth Key freedom suit (and similar challenges), in December 1662, the Virginia House of Burgesses passed a colonial law to clarify the status of children of women of Negro descent around "doubts [that] have arisen whether children got by an Englishmen upon a negro woman should be slave or free."