“She Became My Heroine”: Celia, Missouri’s Unsuspecting, But Revolutionary Abolitionist

June marks the beginning of Juneteenth festivities where we celebrate the victories and sacrifices made by our freedom fighters who have pushed us closer to liberation.

Yet we know that the nearly 200,000 Black Civil War soldiers, who made up 10% of the Union army, represented just a tipping point of a much longer struggle to end chattel slavery.

A through line connects these soldiers to the likes of Nat Turner, Denmark Vesey, and Gabriel Prosser, just to name a few. There were also numerous unknown women and men who exacted daily assaults on slavery, making the profitable institution dangerously volatile.

An enslaved woman from Missouri, who merely went by the name of Celia, sits comfortably among this legion of freedom fighters. She did so by bucking all conventional (and legal) wisdom of the time, asserting Black women’s right to defend themselves. 

Africans in Missouri were well represented among those who resisted chattel slavery. Perhaps the most well known combatants were Dred and Harriet Robinson Scott who sued for their freedom in the 1850s. They based their claim on the logic of the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which declared land north of the Mason-Dixon line as free territory. The enslaved couple spent considerable time in territories that were legally free. Thus the Scotts resisted the efforts of the Emerson and Sanford families, who held legal title to them, to keep them in bondage. 

In a country that has historically privileged white supremacy and capitalism, the Scotts’ appeals to freedom were denied by the U.S. Supreme Court who further deemed that Black people were not citizens and “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”

Few people had such an intimate experience with the violations and trampling of rights by white men than Black women. Black women provided not only physical labor but also the reproductive labor that gave U.S. slavery its distinctive character. They routinely faced sexual assault, and knew well before the Dred Scott case, that no American governmental institution would provide them with suitable recourse. 

Thus, some had to take matters into their own hands, literally.

Celia first appears in the historical record in 1850. In this year she was fourteen years old and purchased by Robert Newsom in Audrain County, which is about a two hour drive west from St. Louis. 

What started as a business transaction for Newsom, quickly turned into what must have been perpetual trauma for Celia. She endured incessant sexual abuse by Newsom, starting on the first day. He, like many slaveholders, was a child rapist.

At least one child was born from these forced violations.

Still, during her time at the Newsom plantation, Celia developed a romantic relationship with a fellow enslaved man named George.

It is reported that George grew increasingly uncomfortable with Celia and Newsom’s relationship, its coercive nature notwithstanding.

By June 1855, Celia was pregnant again and asked Newsom to cease his unwanted visits to her cabin, at least while she carried the child to term. Yet he was unmoved. Celia even appealed to Newsom’s daughters who were either powerless or complicit. His coercion continued. 

On June 23, 1855, Robert had come to Celia’s cabin as he had routinely done for multiple years. Cornered, and even more vulnerable now with child, Celia retreated to a section of the cabin where she hid a rather large stick. With her back to the wall, Celia smashed the blunt object across Robert’s head. According to court records, he slumped to the floor, disoriented, and was soon met with a second and fatal blow.

After considering her next moves, Celia settled on burning Newsom’s body in the cabin’s fireplace.  The following morning, she reduced the remaining large bones to fragments by smashing them against hearth stones. 
 
She even convinced Newsom’s unsuspecting grandson to collect and carry the ashes outside of her cabin for two dozen walnuts. Unknown to him, he sprinkled the remains of his grandfather on a path leading to the horse stables.

A hastily assembled search party interrogated the enslaved community. It quickly zeroed in on Celia, resulting in a confession under duress.
 
Her defense team employed a strategy asserting a woman’s right to defend herself. Yet, the defense was hamstrung by Judge William Augustus Hall who instructed the jury not to acquit Celia on the basis of self defense or sexual assault. It likely would not have mattered anyway. The jury consisted of all white men, four of whom were slave owners. Few were surprised when Celia was convicted and sentenced to death.

Still, a glimmer of hope remained as Celia appealed to the Missouri Supreme Court. Yet, with the odds clearly not in her favor, she miraculously escaped the Callaway County Jail during the appeal process. However, she was summarily captured and returned.

Her appeal was equally unsuccessful. Just as the Supreme Court would later deem African Americans as non-citizens, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled that Black women did not enjoy the same rights as white women. Their bodies, at least in the eyes of the law, were not their own.

Celia was executed by hanging at the Fulton County Courthouse on December 21, 1855. However, during her incarceration, she gave birth a daughter and now has descendants who are currently living.

Little remains of Celia’s interior life or her own words. She was not allowed to testify in court as Missouri did not permit enslaved Africans to speak in their own defense if their word contradicted that of a white person.

She is also noted for confessing to the crime shortly after the discovery of Newsom’s body and before her execution. Yet, it is difficult for us or Celia to trust the interpretation of whites who constructed a society that saw Black people as non-persons. 

Even the northern based New York Times reflected the sympathies of slaveholders, deeming the case “one of the most horrible tragedies ever enacted in our country.”

However, they would not have the last word. In 2024, Missouri overturned her verdict and she was given an official pardon by Governor Mike Parson.

Celia would also inspire later freedom fighters. One such example is Margaret Bush Wilson who served as president of the St. Louis and Missouri NAACP branches during the height of the Civil Rights Movement. She would later become the first woman to chair the national NAACP Board of Directors. While a law student at Lincoln University’s short lived law school, she came across Celia’s case and was instantly spellbound.

Wilson remembered saying to herself, “ ‘Nothing that happens to me can compare with what this teen-aged girl endured.’ That was the moment when she became my heroine and she will continue to be to the end of my days.”