Christopher Lehman’s “It Took Courage: Eliza Winston’s Quest For Freedom”
Wednesday, April 23, 2025, 7:00 p.m.
East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier Street, Saint Paul, MN 55106
Join the East Side Freedom Library the day after the awards ceremony in welcoming Minnesota Book Award finalist Christopher Lehman as he returns to ESFL for his award-nominated book It Took Courage: Eliza Winston’s Quest for Freedom.
In 1860, Eliza Winston escaped enslavement while traveling in Minnesota, where she secured her freedom through legal appeal. Her story adds powerful testimony to African American experiences and perseverance in antebellum America.
Winston petitioned for her freedom before a judge in Minnesota—and she won. After she left the state for Canada, the abolitionists who had helped her told and retold the story, emphasizing their own actions; their detractors claimed they had used Winston as a pawn. For more than 150 years, historians’ accounts have emphasized the mobs who battled in the streets after the ruling, focusing on the implications of the events for Minnesota politics rather than Winston’s own story. With It Took Courage, Christopher P. Lehman helps set the record straight.
Christopher P. Lehman is a professor of ethnic studies at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota. He researches, writes, and teaches about the struggle for African American equality, using the tools of genealogy to trace the lives of people who have left very few traces. He has written six other books, including Slavery’s Reach: Southern Slaveholders in the North Star State, which won the Minnesota Book Award for Minnesota Nonfiction in 2020.
THIS EVENT IS FREE AND OPEN TO EVERYONE FOR THE CAUSE OF SOLIDARITY!