The Yale Drama Series Prize awarded to Barbara Seyda for her play “Celia, A Slave: 26 Characters Testify.” April 2015.

“Celia, A Slave: 26 Characters Testify” is based on the trial manuscripts and court records from the State of Missouri vs. Celia, a Slave, file #4496, Callaway County Court, 1855, Fulton, Missouri. At age 19, Celia, the female slave, was accused, convicted, and hanged for killing her 66-year-old master, a prosperous Missouri landowner. The play is a tableau of interviews with the dead. “I’m thrilled to chose Barbara Seyda’s play for the 2105 Yale Drama Series,” says Wright. “My reason for rating the play so highly was the thick lump of pain that it placed in my chest and that I carried around with me for days afterwards. I had a completely primitive and intuitive reaction to the tragedy of the story and the whole life, in a way.”

Celia Project Co-Director Martha Jones was featured in an episode of American History TV on CSPAN discussing State of Missouri v. Celia, a Slave. October 2014.

Meet the Keepers of Black Women’s History. The Root. February 2014.

Often behind the scenes and with little fanfare, these black female historians earn doctorates, churn out articles and books, and train the next generation of researchers. They have taken on the task of making sure we understand everything from the nature of sexual violence during slavery to the work of African-American feminist organizations. So during this Women’s History Month, meet the scholars who are the keepers of black women’s history—not just in February or March but all year (and all career) long.

Washington University in St. Louis student Susan DiMauro worked in the papers of attorney and activist Margaret Bush Wilson to recover this memory of Celia’s case. Celia: From the Desk of Margaret Bush Wilson. April 2013.

“Quite by chance, in 1940, I stumbled on an account of the fate of Celia during my first year of law school. While searching through a law book for a class assignment, I spied a citation which said simply “In RE Celia, a Slave.” I wrote the citation down, and several days later found and read the case in its entirety. This account of a young slave girl, pregnant with her master’s child, who killed him and was hanged in 1855 on the Courthouse steps in Fulton, Missouri, was haunting. At the time I remember saying to myself “Nothing that happens to me can compare with what this teen-aged girl endured.” That was the moment when she became my heroine and she will continue to be to the end of my days.”