Lucy A. Delaney

Lucy A. Delaney
"Yours Truly", Lucy A. Delaney, The New York Public Library Digital Collections[1]
Born	Lucy Ann Berry c. 1828–1830 St. Louis, Missouri, United States
Died	August 31, 1910(1910-08-31) (aged 79–80) Hannibal, Missouri, United States
Resting place	Greenwood Cemetery, St. Louis, Missouri
Occupation	Author, seamstress, community leader
Language	English
Nationality	American
Notable works	From the Darkness Cometh the Light, or, Struggles for Freedom
Spouse	Frederick Turner ​ ​ (m. 1845; died 1848)​ Zachariah Delaney ​ ​ (m. 1849; died 1890)​
Parents	Polly Berry

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Lucy Delaney (née Lucy Ann Berry; c. 1828–1830 – August 31, 1910) was an African American seamstress, slave narrator, and community leader. She was born into slavery and was primarily held by the Major Taylor Berry and Judge Robert Wash families. As a teenager, she was the subject of a freedom lawsuit, because her mother lived in Illinois, a free state, longer than 90 days. According to Illinois state law, enslaved people that reside in Illinois for more than 90 days should be indentured and freed. The country's rule of partus sequitur ventrem asserts that if the mother was free at the child's birth, the child should be free. After Delaney's mother, Polly Berry (also known as Polly Wash), filed a lawsuit for herself, she filed a lawsuit on her daughter's behalf in 1842. Delaney was held in jail for 17 months while awaiting the trial.

In 1891, Delaney published the narrative, From the Darkness Cometh the Light, or, Struggles for Freedom. This is the only known first-person account of a freedom suit and one of the few slave narratives published in the post-Emancipation period.^[2] The memoir recounts her mother's legal battles in St. Louis, Missouri, for her own and her daughter's freedom from slavery. For Delaney's case, Berry attracted the support of Edward Bates, a prominent Whig politician and judge, and the future United States Attorney General under President Abraham Lincoln. He argued Delaney's case in court and won her freedom in February 1844. Delaney's and her mother’s cases were two of 301 freedom suits filed in St. Louis from 1814 to 1860. The memoir provides insight into the activities of Delaney's life during and after the freedom suits. There are some discrepancies, though, between the memoir and public records regarding her mother Polly's childhood, such as where she was born and whether she was born free or not.

Delaney and her mother lived in St. Louis briefly before her first marriage in 1845 to Frederick Turner, which brought the mother and daughter to Quincy, Illinois. In 1848, Turner was killed in a steamboat explosion. The women returned to St. Louis, and in 1849, Lucy Berry married Zachariah Delaney. Lucy's mother lived with the Delaney's in the Mill Creek Valley of St. Louis. They had a comfortable middle class life and Delaney and her husband were active leaders in the St. Louis area. Delaney and her husband had at least four children, a couple of whom died in childhood and a couple of whom died in their twenties.