Lucy Delaney (c. 1830 – after 1891) was an African-American author and former slave, remembered for her inspiring 1891 narrative From the Darkness Cometh the Light, or, Struggles for Freedom. The memoir recounts her mother Polly Berry's struggle for her own and her daughter's freedom from slavery, as she was freeborn. Berry won both of these cases in the early 1840s, gaining active support from Edward Bates, a prominent Whig politician. Little is known of Delaney outside of the record of her own memoir. Born into slavery as Lucy Ann Berry in St. Louis, Missouri in 1830, she was the daughter of slaves Polly Berry and a mulatto father whose name she did not note. Polly Berry had been born free as Polly Crockett in Illinois, but was kidnapped as a child by slave catchers. She had been living with a family who later attested to her free status.[1] She was sold to Major Taylor Berry of St. Louis. When Delaney wrote her memoir late in life, she remembered the Major and his wife Fanny as kind slaveholders. Taylor Berry died in a duel, and a few years later Fanny married Robert Wash, a lawyer later appointed as judge. When Fanny Wash died, the Berry family’s fortunes changed. Although Major Berry's will had called for freeing his slaves, Judge Wash sold Lucy's father to a plantation down the Mississippi River, to the Deep South. Because of separation from family and the harsh working conditions on large cotton and sugar plantations, this was a fate dreaded by slaves. Polly Berry became increasingly restless and concerned for their safety under new owners. She grew determined to arrange escape for herself and her two daughters. Lucy Ann's older sister Nancy easily slipped away while traveling with Mary Berry Cox and her new husband, on their honeymoon in the North. Nancy left them at Niagara Falls, took the ferry across the river, and safely reached Canada and a friend of her mother's.[2] After conflict with Mary Cox, Polly Berry was sold, but escaped about three weeks later. She made it to Chicago, but was captured by slave catchers under the Fugitive Slave Act. She was then returned to St. Louis.[3] On returning, Polly Berry sued for her freedom and managed to convince a jury of her free birth and kidnapping. Her suit was successful and she was freed. She remained in St. Louis to try to secure Lucy Ann Berry's freedom by legal or illegal means.[4] By 1842, Lucy was working for Martha Berry Mitchell, another of the Berry daughters. They had conflict in part because of Lucy's inexperience at some of the tasks. Martha decided to sell her, and her husband arranged the sale. The day before she was to leave, Lucy escaped and hid at the house of a friend of her mother’s. That week, Polly Berry filed suit in court in St. Louis for Lucy Berry's freedom, arguing that the daughter of a freeborn woman must be considered freeborn, by the current laws. She later persuaded Edward Bates, then a prominent Whig politician and judge, to argue the suit in court. He was of Quaker descent and a supporter of abolition. He became the US Attorney General under Abraham Lincoln. Lucy Ann Berry was remanded to the jail, where she remained for more than 17 months. In February 1844 the case went to trial. Her mother had affidavits from the people she lived with as a free child, and Judge Wash (Fanny Berry Wash's widower) testified that Lucy was definitely Polly Crockett Berry's child. The jury believed the case for freedom had been proved, and the judge announced Lucy Berry was free. She was approximately 14 years old. In 1845, her mother visited her sister Nancy and her family in Toronto. Soon after her return to St Louis, Lucy met steamboat worker Frederick Turner. The couple married that year and settled in Quincy, Illinois. However, Turner died soon after in a boiler explosion. The steamboat that killed him was The Edward Bates, named for the same lawyer who had secured Berry's freedom only a few years before. Lucy and her mother then moved back to St. Louis. Four years later she met and married Zachariah Delaney in 1849. They were married for the rest of their lives. Though the couple had four children, two did not survive infancy; the remaining children, a son and a daughter, both died in their early twenties, leaving Delaney childless. Lucy's mother Polly lived with her after she gained her freedom. They worked together as seamstresses. Lucy Delaney became active in associations for civic activism and community support. Such associations grew rapidly in both the African-American and white communities nationally in the years following the Civil War. She had joined the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1855. In addition, she was elected president of the Female Union, an organization of African-American women. She also served as president of the Daughters of Zion, another women's association, as well as with a group associated with Masons, to which her husband belonged.[5] They often supported community education and health projects. She also was a member of the Col. Shaw Woman's Relief Corps, No. 34, auxiliary to the Col. Shaw Post, 343, Grand Army of the Republic. The veterans' group was named after the commanding officer of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry, the first of the United States Colored Troops and a unit that had achieved fame for courage in the Civil War. Delaney dedicated her memoir to the Grand Army of the Republic, which had fought for the freedom of slaves.[6] In the late 19th century, many blacks migrated to St. Louis from the South. Lucy met with newly arriving people trying to track down her father. She discovered he had lived those years on a plantation 15 miles south of Vicksburg, Mississippi and wrote to him, asking him to visit her. Her sister Nancy joined their reunion in St. Louis. Their father was glad to see them, but, with his wife dead, he returned to his friends of 45 years in Mississippi.[7] Nothing was recorded about the year or circumstances of Lucy Delaney's death. In 1891, Delaney published her From the Darkness Cometh the Light, or, Struggles for Freedom, which remains virtually the only source of information regarding her life. The text takes much of its shape from slave narratives. It was primarily devoted to Polly Berry’s struggles to free her family. Though the story is ostensibly Delaney’s, Berry remains the primary driving force and is featured as the lead protagonist. The narrative is steeped in spirituality. It celebrated what Delaney saw as God’s benevolent role in her own life. She attacked the hypocrisy of Christian slave owners. Also, like many post-bellum slave narratives, From the Darkness attempts to show the strength of the African Americans who suffered under slavery, rather than recount its horrors. Consequently, the narrative continued after Delaney gained her freedom at age 14. It showed her fortitude following the death of her first husband, and later each of her four children. In this, again, Delaney’s mother served as an advisor and role model. Delaney also celebrated her later political involvement, arguing for the potential of African-American citizens in American democracy. From the Darkness was originally published in St. Louis in 1891 by J.T. Smith. After the Civil Rights Movement and new interest in historic black and women's literature, in 1988 the book was reprinted in the collection Six Women’s Slave Narratives by Oxford University Press. Critic P. Gabrielle Foreman has suggested that author Frances Harper based her character of "Lucille Delaney" in the novel Iola Leroy on the historic Delaney’s memoirs. From the Darkness Cometh the Light, or, Struggles for Freedom (1891). Reprinted in Six Women’s Slave Narratives. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1988. ISBN 0-19-505262-5. Shockley, Ann Allen, Afro-American Women Writers 1746-1933: An Anthology and Critical Guide, New Haven, Connecticut: Meridian Books, 1989. ISBN 0-452-00981-2