Righting a wrong from Missouri’s dark past. Before leaving office, Gov. Mike Parson decided to posthumously pardon a 19-year-old slave.
Celia Newsome was executed for killing her slave master after he sexually abused her. Celia’s descendants fought to make this pardon possible.
Although you can’t change history, you can create new chapters.
“All of the leaders of our state have the power to right historic wrongs and they exercise it, they do it,” said Pamela Westbrooks-Hodge of St. Louis County. “Celia’s daughter who came to St. Louis, from whom I descend, and many of her children are buried just down the street in Greenwood Cemetery, (the) historic African American Greenwood Cemetery.”
Her great-great grandmother was Celia Newsome, a slave purchased at 14 years old in Fulton, some 100 miles west of St. Louis. Five years later, Celia would be executed for killing her slave master after he sexually abused her …