Elizabeth Key Grinstead

Elizabeth Key Grinstead (1630 – after 1665) was one of the first persons of African ancestry in the North American colonies to sue for freedom from slavery and win. Elizabeth Key won her freedom and that of her infant son John Grinstead on July 21, 1656 in the colony of Virginia. She sued based on the fact that her father was an Englishman and that she was a baptized Christian. Based on these two factors, her English attorney and common-law husband William Grinstead argued successfully that she should be freed. The lawsuit in 1655 was one of the earliest "freedom suits" by a person of African ancestry in the English colonies.

In response to Key's suit and other challenges, in 1662 the Virginia House of Burgesses passed a law establishing that children born in the colony would have a status follow the social status of the mother, "bond or free". This was in contrast to English common law for English subjects, in which children followed the social status of their father. The new principle came from Roman law and was known as partus sequitur ventrem, also called partus. The legislation hardened the boundaries of slavery by ensuring that all children of women slaves, regardless of paternity and proportion of European ancestry, would be born into slavery unless explicitly freed.

Elizabeth Key or Kaye was born in 1630 in Warwick County, Virginia to a black slave mother. Her father was Thomas Key, a white Englishman and planter, and a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses, who represented Warwick County (today's Newport News). His white wife lived across the James River in Isle of Wight County, where she owned considerable property. Born in England, the Keys were considered pioneer planters as they had come to Virginia before 1616, remained for more than three years, paid their own passage, and survived the Indian massacre of 1622.

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