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Celia

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Slave

The Resume

    (1835-December 21, 1855)
    Defendant in the State of Missouri v. Celia murder trial (1855)
    Convicted of murder for killing slave owner Robert Newsom in self-defense (October 10, 1855)
    Executed by hanging on December 21, 1855

Why she might be annoying:

    Not much is known of her parents or early childhood.
    She burned her owner’s body in her fireplace after killing him, and then disposed of the remains, but got caught the next day anyway.
    It is unknown where she was buried after her execution.
    No photographs, contemporary portraits, or written descriptions of her are known to exist.

Why she might not be annoying:

    From the age of fourteen to nineteen, she was raped on a regular basis by her owner.
    She killed Newsom while trying to fend off his advances with a wooden stick.
    Her lawyer John Jameson argued that she killed him by accident, and in self-defense to avoid being raped, which was a controversial argument at the time.
    She gave birth to her third child in prison and the baby was sold off directly afterward.
    She successfully escaped from jail in an attempt to run out the clock while the Defense team appealed to the Missouri Supreme Court to overturn her conviction (she was caught by Newsom’s son and forcibly returned).
    She may have been helped by a fellow slave she was in a relationship with, but refused to ever implicate him in the killing.
    She became a cause celebre for the abolitionist anti-Slavery movement.

Credit: BoyWithTheGreenHair


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    For 2024, as of last weekly ranking, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2023, Out of 15 Votes: 26.67% Annoying