Shadrach Minkins

Shadrach Minkins (c. 1814 – December 13, 1875) was an African-American fugitive slave from Virginia who escaped in 1850 and reached Boston. He is known for being freed from a courtroom in Boston after being captured by United States marshals under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. White and black members of the Boston Vigilance Committee freed and hid him, helping him get to Canada via the Underground Railroad. Minkins settled in Montreal, where he raised a family. Two men were prosecuted in Boston for helping free him, but they were acquitted by the jury.

Minkins was born into slavery about 1814 in Norfolk, Virginia.

He escaped from slavery as a young man in 1850 and reached Boston, Massachusetts, where he became a waiter. Later that year, Congress enacted the Fugitive Slave Act, which allowed federal agents to seize escaped slaves living in free states and return them to their owners. It required law enforcement in all states to cooperate in enforcing this federal law.

United States marshals, who posed as customers at Taft’s Cornhill Coffee House where Minkins worked, arrested him on February 15, 1851.

Minkins was taken to a hearing at the Boston federal courthouse. Attorneys, including Samuel E. Sewall, Ellis Gray Loring, Robert Morris and Richard Henry Dana, Jr., offered their services to defend Minkins. Seeking to have Minkins released from police custody, they filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus with the Supreme Judicial Court, which was refused by Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw.

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