Morgan examines the legal and cultural expectations of indentured servitude and race in the case of Elizabeth Key, who, upon discovering that she was to be defined as a slave rather than a servant, successfully sued for her freedom in colonial Virginia in 1656.

Speaker

Jennifer L. Morgan is The Silver Family Professor of History in the Department of Social & Cultural Analysis and the Department of History at New York University. In 2024 she was the recipient of a MacArthur “genius” Award and was the Andrew R. Mellon Fellow at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library in 2024-25. She is currently working on The Eve of Slavery—a project about slavery and freedom in the seventeenth century that centers around Elizabeth Key—a black woman who successfully sued for her freedom in Virginia in 1656. In conjunction with that project, she serves as an Executive Producer for Key to Freedom a narrative film project written and directed by her daughter Emma “Zinha” Morgan-Bennett. Morgan served as the Council Chair for the Omohundro Institute for Early American History and Culture. She is the past Vice President of the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians and is a lifetime member of the Association of Black Women Historians.

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