A group of civic leaders, activists and historians hope that ended Sunday in the quiet Massachusetts town of Sheffield with the unveiling of a bronze statue of the woman who chose the name Elizabeth Freeman when she shed the chains of slavery 241 years ago to the day.State Rep. William “Smitty” Pignatelli grew up not far from Sheffield in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts yet didn’t hear her story until about 20 years ago.
Those words were echoed in Article 1 of the Massachusetts Constitution in 1780, which begins “All men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights.” Pignatelli was inspired to raise a statue of Freeman last year when he attended the unveiling of a statue of Susan B. Anthony in Adams, the Berkshire County community where the suffragist was born.
She called Freeman an icon and a trailblazer. “For me as an African American woman, it’s amazing to be walking in her footsteps,” she said. The Sedgwicks had such a deep respect for Mumbet that when she died in 1829 at about the age of 85 she was buried with them, the only non-family member in the family plot. Much of what historians know about her was written by one of Theodore Sedgwick’s daughters, the novelist Catharine Maria Sedgwick, O’Brien said.
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