This essay is part of our “People’s Guide to the Revolution” initiative for 2026. Visit our webpage for original content, events related to the 250th, and more.
By Kyera Singleton
MH Board Member
Executive Director of Royall House and Slave Quarters
On February 14th, 1783, Belinda Sutton demanded an audience. On Frederick Douglass’ birthday, Sutton, who was seventy years old at the time, petitioned the Massachusetts General Court. Unable to write, she dictated her petition and signed her name with the mark of an “x.”
Her demand: reparations!
Enslaved for decades by Isaac Royall, one of the wealthiest men in the Commonwealth, Belinda Sutton was living in Boston as a free Black woman when she filed her petition. Although she was free, the institution of slavery had not yet been abolished nor had the systemic inequities that come with being Black in Revolutionary Massachusetts. And in the eyes of Sutton, freedom, quite frankly, was not enough to atone for the subjugation she experienced while enslaved, the theft of her labor, and the forced separation from her family and homeland as a child.
Through no fault of her own, Belinda did not have much money and could not afford to pay her own rent, buy the firewood to heat her home, put food on the table, or take care of her “infirm” daughter. Thus, Belinda asked an important question, one that many people are still asking today, “what is owed?”
More importantly, she was determined to get what she deserved!
Belinda began her 1783 petition with a biography of her life. She described a homeland, which we have come to know as present day Ghana, as a land of “mountains covered with spicy forests” and “valleys loaded with the richest fruits.” She lived there until she was kidnapped by Europeans only to learn that “her doom was slavery.” In her own words, Belinda stated she was
“ravished from the bosom of her Country, from the arms of her friends — while the advanced age of her Parents, rendering them unfit for servitude, cruelly separated her from them forever!”
By calling attention to her family history, Belinda reminds readers through her petition that she had a past—she had parents, friends, and a home. One of the many cruelties of the institution of slavery is the way that family separation tried to erase Black people’s familial and kinship ties, history, and sense of belonging. However, Belinda did not forget where she came from, nor did she forget that she was once free.
By petitioning for money rightfully owed to her, Belinda Sutton refused to let anyone forget not only how the Royalls made their wealth through slavery, but also about the promises of the revolution. Belinda’s petition continued,
“Fifty years her faithful hands have been compelled to ignoble servitude for the benefit of an Isaac Royall, until, as if Nations must be agitated, and the world convulsed for the preservation of that freedom which the Almighty Father intended for all the human Race, the present war was Commenced – The terror of men armed in the Cause of freedom, compelled her master to fly – and to breathe away his Life in a Land, where, Lawless domination sits enthroned – pouring bloody outrage and cruelty on all who dare to be free.
The face of your Petitioner, is now marked with the furrows of time, and her frame feebly bending under the oppression of years, while she, by the Laws of the Land, is denied the enjoyment of one morsel of that immense wealth, apart whereof hath been accumilated by her own industry, and the whole augmented by her servitude.”
These passages are brilliant. Belinda Sutton asserted that the American Revolution was a moral, political, and ethical fight. Furthermore, she advocated for the end of slavery by saying that the freedom from tyranny that the colonists won should be extended to everyone in the human race. Thus, the revolution was indeed unfinished.
Furthermore, she then reminded the court that Royall was not only a Loyalist, but also, that he fled Medford at the eve of the war, to escape any potential consequences. Thus, Sutton, cleverly argued that due to Royall’s tyranny as an enslaver and a sympathizer of the British crown, she, too, had been robbed of her freedom and labor, which had enriched the Royalls and left her destitute. Thus, Sutton advocated for reparations so that she could enjoy just one morsel of the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that her enslaved labor made possible for everyone else. Surprisingly, Belinda’s appeal worked. The court awarded her an annual pension of 15 pounds and 12 shillings.
The fact that this document led to a successful award of reparations has only made it more valuable as evidence of a formerly enslaved woman’s self-determination against harrowing odds. And yet this triumphant conclusion misses the much more complicated reality. Although Belinda’s petition was approved by the General Court, she faced innumerable challenges actually accessing the money she was owed. In fact, she only received two payments which caused Belinda to spend the next ten years producing additional petitions—five in total—trying to secure money she so desperately needed.
As we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution, we tend to focus on the Declaration of Independence, a foundational document that ushered in freedom for the colonies and founded the country. However, what if we understood Belinda’s petition as a foundational document—one in which that reminds us of the unfinished project of freedom.
As historian Kellie Carter Jackson writes in her book We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance, “refusal is a forceful no.”
By telling the truth about our divided nation in the aftermath of the revolution, Belinda refused to accept the conditions of white supremacy that sought to relegate her to poverty. More importantly, Belinda Sutton, is part of a legacy of Black women, who refused to back down or become invisible in their quest for freedom.