The Freedom Suits Statue outside the Civic Courts Building downtown has been added to the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom Program.
Created by civil rights artist Preston Jackson, the statue commemorates 326 St. Louis Black Americans, including Dred and Harriett Scott, who sought freedom from enslavement by filing lawsuits in the circuit courts between 1814 and 1860.
Jackson’s work, entitled “Freedom’s Home,” was unveiled on June 21, 2022, and has been a site for Juneteenth commemoration each year since. It stands in Freedom Circle at Freedom Plaza, on the 11th street side of the Civil Courts Building in downtown St. Louis.
Former Mayor Tishaura Jones said during the ceremony, “Just as the Gateway Arch is the symbol of the gateway to the west, this monument stands as a testament to fairness – and how our courts served as a gateway to freedom for the enslaved.
“In the Freedom Suits lies a duality – the promise of justice tempered by the fragility of progress. In the end, it was justice that prevailed, even if many plaintiffs did not see it in their lifetimes.”
The statue was completed after “nearly a decade in the making,” according to Freedom Suits Memorial Steering Committee Chair Paul Venker.
22nd Circuit Court Judge David Mason was instrumental in examining many of the Freedom Suits cases and worked to commission the statue. The suits were legal challenges that centered around the “once free, always free” theory. Under this Missouri judicial standard, if enslaved people were taken to free states, they were then freed – even if they later returned to Missouri, a slave state. Hundreds of enslaved individuals used this precedent to sue for their freedom in St. Louis.
“I thought about the all-white male jurors who more than 100 times said to the slave owner, ‘Sorry, this slave is free. The evidence – the truth – says it,’” Mason said during the unveiling.
According to the St. Louis Metropolitan Association, Mason was determined that the memorial would not be funded with public money. It was funded through support of members of the Bar. He envisioned a memorial that would serve as a reminder to lawyers that their purpose is to fight for justice.
The Network has added 31 new entries to its list of sites, interpretive and educational programs and research facilities related to its twice-yearly appraisal of applicants.
The Network to Freedom program, created by Congress in 1998, highlights more than 800 places and programs. The Network verifies that each one is a true story about the men, women and children who freed themselves or were helped by others to escape enslavement.
Some succeeded and others, tragically, failed. The Network to Freedom program has listings in 41 states, Washington, D.C., the U.S. Virgin Islands and Canada.