COLUMBUS, Miss. (AP) - Brenda Durrett, local history assistant at the Columbus-Lowndes Public Library, was indexing court documents preserved in the library’s archives when she found a case unlike any she or archivist Mona Vance-Ali had ever come across.
Lowndes County Circuit Court documents record an African American man named Mills Artis suing a Lowndes County resident named John F. Brown for $1,500…for involuntary servitude…in 1866.
The case
Durrett found two files with three documents each - an official court summons, a document from Artis’ attorneys detailing the plaintiff’s accusation and another document confirming that Brown made his appearance.
Lawyers C.R. Cruesoe and Laurel Harrison represented Artis. Documents with their signatures tell Artis’ story.
In 1862, with the Civil War underway, Artis was a free African American living in Mississippi. Brown somehow forced Artis into slavery - or as Cruesoe and Harrison put it, Artis was “compelled by force to enter into involuntary servitude under the said defendant and to render to the said defendant the fruits of his … labor.”
Artis worked as a slave until May 17, 1865, with Brown apparently receiving profit from Artis’ labor for all or most of that time.
In July 1863, Brown sold Artis to “Barton, a non-resident of Mississippi” who took Artis across state lines. There is no record of who Barton is or even whether Barton is a first or last name. Cruesoe and Harrison also don’t record where Barton took Artis. They write only that Artis was “held in slavery … beyond the limits of the said state” up until the day he was freed.
Presumably May 17, 1865 was the day federal troops reached wherever Artis was living at the time and freed the slaves there. Whatever happened, less than a year after the war ended and the 13th Amendment ending slavery in the United States passed, Artis returned to Lowndes County, found lawyers and sued Brown for $1,500.
The context
Though there isn’t an exact number for how many free African Americans in the antebellum South were forced into slavery, it may have been common, said Chuck Yarborough, local historian and U.S. history teacher at the Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science.
“During the period of slavery, it was profitable for whites who did have the legal and political power to enslave African Americans to do so, whether they were legally free men and women of color or not,” Yarborough said. “But how often it happened, I don’t know.”
Still, Yarborough’s never heard of a case of one of those free African Americans suing for involuntary servitude.
Neither had Vance-Ali. The case interested her, so she delved into other documents at the library searching for an end to Artis’ story.
Records of a John F. Brown show up in a list of Lowndes County marriages between 1821-1922 and again in a list of people buried at Friendship Cemetery, she found. This Brown doesn’t have a date of birth or death, though there is a record of him marrying Mary R. Moore in 1852. John and Mary are buried in Friendship Cemetery in lot 56.
Brown being a common name, it’s possible the John Brown buried in Friendship Cemetery isn’t the same John Brown who was accused of forcing Artis into slavery, but the timing seems to match up.
There’s even less on Artis, “commonly called Mills,” as Cruesoe and Harrison say in the court records.
The story ends anticlimactically in November 1866 when, Circuit Court records show, the case was thrown out because Artis didn’t pay his court fees.
Vance-Ali was disappointed. The story didn’t feel complete. Why didn’t Artis pay his court fees? Could he not afford it? Did someone pay him off? Did someone scare him off?
“There’s really no way to tell what happened or why,” Vance-Ali said.
Local historian Rufus Ward said it’s unlikely Artis would have filed the suit if he couldn’t pay the court fees. But it’s hard to even guess what happened with so little information.
“The question is: Did he not have any money at all?” Ward said. “Or sometimes … the individual being sued would come up and offer to pay some money if the lawsuit was just dropped and didn’t proceed any further.”
At the time, Columbus was under federal occupation, meaning it may have been Artis’ best chance to file a successful suit, Vance-Ali said. But federal occupation didn’t necessarily mean it was safe for African Americans to sue whites, Yarborough added.
“What happens is the Civil War ends in the spring of 1865,” Yarborough said. “Lincoln is assassinated. Johnson becomes president and he institutes a policy that’s fairly lenient toward former Confederates to get back their land as well as to return to power. … In states like Mississippi, the effort was made to return Mississippi and the South to a social and economic system as close to slavery as possible. … It did mean legal and economic oppression of African Americans and restricted their freedom of movement.
“I haven’t looked at the document, but I would suspect that (suing for back pay) was a pretty courageous thing to do,” he added.
There may have been attempts to pressure Artis to drop his lawsuit, Ward said, depending on how well-liked Brown was.
For Ward, this case demonstrates the importance of local records.
“Really it’s surprising some of the things in there,” he said. “I found one case where some local major slave owners were sued for helping somebody else’s slaves escape. They had to pay damages to the person because they helped their slave escape. Old records are very interesting. We’re very fortunate to have the archives that have been preserved here. Most places don’t have that.”
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Information from: The Commercial Dispatch, https://www.cdispatch.com
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