The same courthouse hosted the Amistad case and Massachusetts emancipation

Evidence

To begin, the courthouse was named for John Adams, our second president, who was born in Massachusetts. His son, John Quincy Adams, petitioned the US Supreme Court for the freedom of Cinque and thirty-four other Mende men from the slave ship Amistad. He argued that case in 1841, which led to the men being returned to Africa in what has been considered the first civil rights case in the United States. Decades earlier, in 1783, this was also where the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court made the courageous decision to abolish slavery in Massachusetts and free Elizabeth “Mum Bett” Freeman, one of the first enslaved people to sue for her freedom after hearing her owner and his friends discussing the newly ratified Massachusetts Constitution. — Tamara Lanier, From These Roots, 1251

Categorization

• CANDY: The layered history of the John Adams Courthouse is a striking, easily-shared fact.