By William “Skip” Deegans
Pictured is a portrait of Henry St. George Tucker (1780-1848), Tucker was President of the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals when the court held session in Lewisburg in 1831 in the borrowed Greenbrier County Courthouse. The justice’s law library was housed in the former Greenbrier County Library that is being restored by the Greenbrier Historical Society.
While serving on the Court, Tucker participated in Hudgins v. Wright, an unusual and important civil rights case that was heard in 1806. Houlder Hudgins, a slave holder, owned Jackey Wright and her two children. Hudgins contended that Wright was a legitimate slave because her father was African. Wright sought freedom for herself and her children by arguing that she should not be enslaved because she was a descendent of a Native American woman. Virginia law was based on the principle of Partus sequitur ventrem, meaning that children born in Virginia took their social status from their mother. The case was on appeal from a decision by Judge George Wythe, Chancellor of the Superior Court of Chancery, who determined the Wrights were of various shades of white and should be free.
Beginning in Virginia in 1679, Native American prisoners taken in war could be enslaved. However, after 1705, they could no longer be enslaved. The Wrights produced witnesses who contended Jackey Wright’s mother and grandmother were Native American. Without DNA testing and inclusive census records, the justices had to rely on Wright’s witnesses and physical appearances. Justice Tucker reviewed the physical characteristics of American Indians and people of African descent and concluded there was sufficient evidence to determine the Wright’s were of American Indian descent. Another justice, Spencer Roane, said, “…in the case of a person visibly appearing to be a white or Indian, the presumption is that he is free, and It is necessary for his adversary to shew (sic) that he is a slave.” Since there was no testimony that showed any females in Wright’s ancestry had been a slave or an Indian who had been rightfully held as a slave, the Wrights won their freedom with all five judges concurring. To summarize, the court decided if you look like you are Native American you are a Native American; if you look like you are Black, you are Black.
West Virginia’s Tucker County was named for Justice Tucker, and Roane County was named for Justice Roane. Both Tucker and Roane owned slaves.
Sources: Reports of Cases Argued and Determined In The Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia by Hening and Munford; What Blood Won’t Tell: A History of Races on Trial in America by Arieia J. Gross; The Story of Lewisburg’s 1834 Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia Law Library and Study Building by Al Emch.
