Lucy A. Delaney

Lucy A. Delaney (1830-1891) was an African American author and activist. Born into slavery in St. Louis, Missouri, she was the daughter of Polly Berry, a freeborn woman from Illinois who had been stolen into slavery as a young girl. In 1843, after multiple escape attempts and years of waiting for her cases to be heard, Polly won two separate lawsuits in St. Louis to earn freedom for herself and her daughter. Two years later, Lucy married Frederick Turner and moved to Illinois with him and her mother, but was forced to return to Missouri shortly thereafter following Turner’s death in a steamboat boiler explosion. In 1849, she married Zachariah Delaney, with whom she would have four children. Alongside her husband, Delaney was an active member of the African Methodist Episcopal Church and a supporter of local health and education initiatives. In addition, she served as president of both the Female Union, an organization for African American women, and the Daughters of Zion, an affiliate group of the Freemasons. At the age of 52, Delaney was reunited with her father 45 years after he was sold down the Mississippi River to a plantation owner in the deep south. In the last year of her life, Delaney published From the Darkness Cometh the Light (1891), a memoir and slave narrative which remains the only known firsthand account of a freedom suit.