The Abolition Riot of 1836 took place in Boston, Massachusetts in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. In August 1836, Eliza Small and Polly Ann Bates, two enslaved women from Baltimore who had run away, were arrested in Boston and brought before Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw. The judge ordered them freed because of a problem with the arrest warrant. When the agent for their enslaver requested a new warrant, the spectators—mostly African-American women—rioted in the courtroom and rescued Small and Bates.
The incident was one of several slave rescue efforts that took place in Boston. Controversy over the fate of George Latimer led to the passage of the 1843 Liberty Act, which prohibited the arrest of fugitive slaves in Massachusetts. Abolitionists rose to the defense of Ellen and William Craft in 1850, Shadrach Minkins in 1851, and Anthony Burns in 1854. An attempt to rescue Thomas Sims in 1852 was unsuccessful.