 Letter from Thirteen Choctaw and Chickasaw Freedmen Pleading for Federal Assistance in Emancipating their Kin (1865) |
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This letter, formulated by a group of thirteen men who fled enslavement in the Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations, details how Choctaw and Chickasaw enslavers continued to hold Black people in bondage. The letter includes a plea for federal assistance in ensuring the freedom of the authors' family members, an exhibit with the names and locations of eighty people who were still enslaved in the Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations, and an accounting of how self-emancipated Black people were under threat of immediate death if they were to return to either nation.
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| Letters of Application for Fee Patent (1915) |
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Three applications sent to the Secretary of the Interior for admission to full American citizenship through the competency process. These applications summarized the main assets and qualities of the Native American individual that qualified them for U.S. citizenship. Some applications were written by the Native American applicant, but the majority were composed by a reservation agent. Together, these three applications reveal the changes brought upon Native American landholdings and personal identity as a result of the Allotment and Assimilation era. They emphasize how legal schemes, such as the competency commissions, upheld racialized legal benchmarks as indicators of a Native person's readiness for citizenship.
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| List of Enslaved People Freed by Lawrence Taliaferro |
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This undated note scribbled on the back of a document attesting to Lawrence Talliaferro's membership in the Franklin Society lists the names of 21 enslaved men and women whom Taliaferro manumitted between 1839-1843. Among the named is Harriet Robinson, the wife of Dred Scott.
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| List of Freedmen who have been Murdered in the state of Texas since the close of the Rebellion (1866) |
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These records document the extreme extent of retributive, white supremacist violence committed against the population of freedmen and women upon emancipation in Texas. This compilation contains graphic language and descriptions.
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| Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock (1903) |
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After Congress attempted to pass legislation that violated the Medicine Lodge Treaty of 1867, Kiowa chief Lone Wolf filed a complaint on behalf of the tribes who had signed the treaty. The Supreme Court sided with Congress and upheld the violation of the treaty.
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| Louisiana Purchase Treaty (1803) |
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The Louisiana Purchase Treaty reflected United States ambitions toward empire, while ignoring critical issues regarding the incorporation of Native nations.
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| Making A Sioux Indian Into An American Citizen (1916) |
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In this newspaper article, Secretary of Interior Franklin Lane gives an account of a naturalization ritual that took place on the Yankton Reservation, South Dakota, in 1916. This article highlights the lived experience of naturalization processes for Native American individuals becoming U.S. citizens, revealing the involvement of other participants at the ceremony. This account highlights the complexities with receiving allotment for Native individuals and some of the effects citizenship had on legal and political rights. With a photograph of the event, this document provides a glimpse into the symbolic nature of the event, where the restructuring of Native identity encouraged in Allotment and Assimilation era policies is performed.
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| Mann Act (1910) |
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The Mann Act was a federal law that focused on interstate sex trafficking, specifically of white women. The act was responsible for the targeting of inter-racial couples by law enforcement.
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| Marbury v. Madison (1803) |
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This landmark Supreme Court decision established the principle of judicial review, giving the courts the right to determine the constitutionality of the actions of the other two branches of government.
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| Massachusetts Personal Liberty Act (1855) |
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Passed in reaction to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, the Massachusetts Personal Liberty Act was among laws passed by Northern states in an attempt to protect Black residents from unwarranted arrest.
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| Matilda v. Isaac Vanbibber (1815) |
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Matilda was a Black girl, aged twelve or thirteen, who was brought into Indiana Territory and later forcibly removed to Missouri Territory and sold as a slave. In her petition for freedom, Matilda argued that she earned her freedom while in Indiana Territory by virtue of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 which banned slavery in the new territories.
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| Medicine Lodge Treaty (1867) |
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Signed between the United States government and several of the Great Plains Native American tribes, the Medicine Lodge Treaties were a series of treaties relocating these Native American groups to Indian Territory. The October 21, 1867 treaty relocated the Kiowa and Comanche people.
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| Memorial of Chinese laborers resident at Rock Springs, Wyoming Territory (1885) |
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Over five hundred Chinese survivors of the 1885 racial violence in Rock Springs petitioned Huang Sih Chuen, the Chinese consul at New York, providing testimony of the white-led massacre and detailing the circumstances through which they lost property. Survivors demanded bodily protection and property compensation, while invoking recent treaty stipulations between the U.S. and China
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| Memorial of the Freedmen of the Chickasaw Nation (1882) |
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This statement prepared by two Chickasaw Freedmen used clauses in Article 3 of the Treaty of 1866 to assert that Freedmen had the right to remain in the Chickasaw Nation despite not being formally adopted as citizens. They also demanded Chickasaw Freedmen be guaranteed the right to vote within the Chickasaw Nation.
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| Milly v. Mathias Rose (1819) |
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In this freedom suit, Milly sued for her freedom on behalf of herself and her two children Eliza and Bob. Milly argued that she should be free on account of being held in slavery in the free Illinois Territory.
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| Mima Queen & Louisa Queen v. John Hepburn (1813) |
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This unsuccessful freedom suit reflects the legal challenges to slavery and hinged on the Supreme Court's decision that hearsay about family genealogy could not be used as evidence, setting later precedent. Mina (spelled Mima in the court record) Queen petitioned for her freedom and that of her daughter on the grounds that her great grandmother Mary Queen was a free woman of color. When the lower court disallowed critical testimony about Mary Queen's origins and status, Queen appealed the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court on a writ of error, arguing that hearsay testimony should be allowed in a petition for freedom case. The Supreme Court denied the appeal, upholding the lower court's ruling.
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| Miscarriage (1867) |
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The Illinois state statute regarding miscarriage reflects the diverse landscape of abortion law in the nineteenth century. This law punished individuals for helping pregnant women obtain a miscarriage.
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| Mississippi Black Codes (1865) |
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Black Codes were enacted by former slave states following the abolishment of slavery with the 13th Amendment in order to restrict the freedom of Black people. Mississippi was the first state to pass such codes in November 1865. Laws like these to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Fourteenth Amendment.
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| Missouri Compromise (1820) |
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The Missouri Compromise admitted Missouri into the Union as a slave state and Maine as a free state. The compromise also suggested that slavery be prohibited north of the 36°30' latitude, which was followed until the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854.
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| Missouri v. Celia - Newspaper Coverage (1855) |
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In 1855, the Callaway County Circuit Court in Missouri convicted eighteen-year-old Celia of murdering her enslaver. Her case considered whether she was guilty of murder or if she could be acquitted due to self-defense from sexual assault. The court ruled that Celia's enslaved status prevented her from being eligible to protect herself, and she was sentenced to death. Newspapers in Missouri reported on the murder and resulting trial.
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| Monroe Doctrine (1823) |
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In an address before Congress, President James Monroe warned European powers not to interfere in the affairs of the Western Hemisphere. The United States continued to invoke the Monroe Doctrine in its foreign policy through to today.
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| Morrill Act (1862) |
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This act, passed during the Civil War, prioritized proficiency in agriculture and mechanics to see to the needs of the growing country. The act granted federal lands to each state for the endowment, support, and maintenance of at least one college that promotes agriculture and the mechanic arts. The University of Nebraska-Lincoln was established in 1869 as Nebraska's land-grant university.
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| Native American Citizenship and Competency During the Allotment and Assimilationist Era |
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This teaching module explores how citizenship featured in Native American policy during the Allotment and Assimilation Era. It highlights the first formal naturalization process for individuals on a national scale. Focusing on competency commissions from 1915 to 1920, this unit guides students in analyzing how legal assessments of "competency" in the context of citizenship were shaped by race, gender, and settler values. Using primary documents— including applications, inspection reports, and naturalization rituals—this module examines how federal policies enforced whiteness and domestic norms as criteria for inclusion. The module also encourages discussion about the dual role of citizenship as both a tool of assimilation and a potential resource for Native resistance and legal agency.
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| Naturalization Act of 1870 |
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The 1870 Naturalization Act extended paths to United States citizenship for people of African descent while excluding Chinese immigrants.
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| Nebraska Vagrancy Law (1881) |
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Vagrancy acts passed by the Nebraska state legislature reflected race-neutral legal language that was used to target the poor, people of color, and women.
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