Technically speaking, no. In New Jersey, where women could vote until 1807, free black women were not excluded by the State Constitution (again, the laws still didnāt let slaves vote). The requirements for voting in New Jersey were as follows:
The voter must have reached the age of majorityĀ
The voter must be āworth fifty pounds proclamation money, clear estate in the same.ā
The voter must have lived within the county for at least a year
Gender and race were not considered limiting factors, which meant that free black people who had attained a certain threshold of wealth were eligible. Married women could not technically own property, so they werenāt eligible, but single women and widows were. If there happened to be a free black woman in the state of New Jersey between 1776 (when their Constitution was drafted) and 1807 (when gender and race restrictions were put in place), and she was not married, and she had attained the necessary threshold of wealth, she was eligible.Ā
It would be very difficult to find out if anyone like this ever existed, and if they did, whether they voted in any elections, but itās entirely possible. Black women faced more stringent voting restrictions because unlike white women they needed to be free in addition to being unmarried, and in a racist society it was likely much harder for them to acquire the necessary wealth and property. Still, they were eligible.
While looking into this I made a cursory attempt to find a record of any unmarried, property-owning free black women in New Jersey. I didnāt see much, but I did run across something thatās probably of interest to people:
Elizabeth FreemanĀ was born a slave around 1744 in New York, and essentially brought about the end of slavery in Massachusetts single-handedly. Just as an example of the kind of woman Freeman was, at one point she shielded a young girl from the attack of their mistress,Ā Hannah Ashley, and received a bad wound on her arm. Hereās what Freeman had to say about that:Ā āI had a bad arm all winter, but Madam had the worst of it. I never covered the wound, and when people said to me, before Madam, āBetty, what ails your arm?ā I only answered - āask missis!ā Which was the slave and which was the real misses?ā
In 1780, Freeman heard a public reading of the Massachusetts Constitution and was struck by the first article, which begins, āall men are born free and equal.ā She sought out a lawyer and sued the state for her freedom, pointing out that the wording of the State Constitution conflicted with slavery. Slavery in Massachusetts was declared unconstitutional as a result of this case (though it still took some time for slavery to fully end, by 1790 there were no recorded slaves in the state), and Freeman was given her freedom (and was compensated for her laborā¦nice).Ā
Freemanās old masters asked her to come back to their house and work for a wage, but she basically told them to go fuck themselves and went to work for the attorney who represented her,Ā Theodore Sedgwick, as a paid servant and governess. Eventually she became a popular and in-demand midwife and nurse, and she and her daughter bought a house in Stockbridge. She died around 85, and was buried in the Sedgwick family plot.
Anyway, Elizabeth Freeman seems like an absolutely amazing and fascinating person, and sheās a good example of a politically active, property-owning black woman in early America, though Iām sure thereās no shortage of others.
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