Video Description: New August 2022! Court documents filed in St. Louis tell inspiring stories of courage when slaves fought for their freedom by challenging their owners in court.

• Use the video as an introduction to student study of freedom suits filed by slaves. After viewing the video, have students list what they think the freedom suits were focused on and create a list of questions they’d like answered about freedom suits as they engage in their study.
• Provide the video to students doing an independent project on American slavery in the 19th century.
• Use the video in a flipped learning activity with other videos in our collection that you find with the keyword “freedom suits.” Divide the class into groups and give each group this video to watch plus unique videos only for their group. Have students watch the videos on their own and determine important information they want to share with the class about what they learned and important questions they’d like to find answers to in further class exploration of the topic. Have each group present and continue the exploration of the topic from there.