Charlotte Dupuy

Biography

Charlotte Dupuy, also called Lottie (c. 1787–1790 – c. 1866), was an enslaved African-American woman who filed a freedom suit in 1829 against her enslaver, Henry Clay, who was then Secretary of State. The case went to trial 17 years before Dred Scott filed his more famous legal challenge to slavery. Then, living in Washington, D.C., Dupuy sued for her freedom and that of her two children based on a promise by her previous enslaver. The case was one of the many freedom suits filed by enslaved people in the decades before the American Civil War. Although the Circuit Court's ruling in 1830 went against Dupuy, she had worked for wages for 18 months and lived in the household of Martin Van Buren, the succeeding Secretary of State, while it was decided. Clay had returned to his home in Kentucky in 1829.

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