Belinda Sutton (born 1713 in West Africa), also known as Belinda Royall, was a Ghanaian-born woman who was enslaved by the Royall family at the

Isaac Royall House The Isaac Royall House is a historic house located in Medford, Massachusetts, near Tufts University. The historic estate was founded by Bay Colony native Isaac Royall and is recognized as giving a face and life to the history and existence of ...

Medford, Massachusetts Medford is a city northwest of downtown Boston on the Mystic River in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. At the time of the 2020 U.S. Census, Medford's population was 59,659. It is home to Tufts University, which has its campus al ...

, USA. She was abandoned by, Isaac Royall Jr., when he fled to

Nova Scotia Nova Scotia ( ; ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is one of the three Maritime provinces and one of the four Atlantic provinces. Nova Scotia is Latin for "New Scotland". Most of the population are native Eng ...

at the beginning of the

American Revolution The American Revolution was an ideological and political revolution that occurred in British America between 1765 and 1791. The Americans in the Thirteen Colonies formed independent states that defeated the British in the American Revoluti ...

. See also Alicia Rivera
"Belinda Royall (1712-?)
''The Black Past,'' 20 September 2009. Retrieved 11 October 2022. In February 1783, Sutton presented a petition to the

Massachusetts General Court The Massachusetts General Court (formally styled the General Court of Massachusetts) is the state legislature of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The name "General Court" is a hold-over from the earliest days of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, ...

requesting a

pension A pension (, from Latin ''pensiō'', "payment") is a fund into which a sum of money is added during an employee's employment years and from which payments are drawn to support the person's retirement from work in the form of periodic payments ...

from the proceeds of her enslaver's estate. As a result of this petition, an annual pension of fifteen pounds and twelve shillings was awarded to her. This pension has been cited as one of the first cases of reparation for slavery and the slave trade. Subsequent petitions to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts indicate that after two initial payments, the pension payments were not forthcoming. She continued to petition for the back payments until a final filing in 1793. In her 1980 poem "Belinda's Petition,"

Rita Dove Rita Frances Dove (born August 28, 1952) is an American poet and essayist. From 1993 to 1995, she served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. She is the first African American to have been appointed since the positi ...

gives voice to a woman first enslaved at age 12: "Lately your Countrymen have severed / the Binds of Tyranny," she says, adding simply, "I would hope you / would consider the Same for me."Dove, Rita
“Belinda’s Petition”
(1980). Reprinted on the website of the ''Royall House and Slave Quarters.'' Retrieved 11 October 2022.

References

1712 births Year of death unknown Royall Royall Royall 18th-century African-American women People of colonial Massachusetts {{US-bio-stub