About Celia

Morally Innocent, Legally Guilty

Celia Newsom was an enslaved woman (believed to be of African and European descent) born around 1836. In 1850, when Celia was just 14 years old, Robert Newsom - a 60-year-old widowed farmer from Callaway County, Missouri, originally from Greenbrier County, West Virginia - purchased Celia in Audrain County, Missouri, to be his concubine.

For nearly five years, Celia endured repeated sexual assault at the hands of Robert Newsom. But by the summer of 1855, she decided enough was enough. On June 23, 1855, despite Celia’s repeated pleas for him to stop, Newsom entered her cabin again, seeking to assault her. At 19 years old and pregnant, Celia asserted her God-given rights to self-determination, human agency, and bodily autonomy - and defended herself. Celia struck Robert Newsom on the head with a stick, killing him. Throughout the night, she burned his body in her fireplace and disposed of the ashes the following morning. When questioned about his disappearance, Celia eventually confessed and explained to the Callaway County authorities the horrific abuse she had endured.

At the time, Missouri law made it a crime to “to take any woman unlawfully against her will and by force, menace or duress, compel her to be defiled,” allowing women to claim self-defense in resisting such assaults. Despite this law, Callaway County Circuit Court Judge William Hall ruled that enslaved women were the property of their enslavers, not citizens, and had no rights to bodily autonomy or self-defense. In his view, the legal definition of rape did not apply to the sexual assault of an enslaved person by their enslaver so the protection of self-defense did not apply either.

Celia was charged, tried, and found guilty of the murder of Robert Newsom by an all-white, all-male jury, nearly all of whom were slave owners. Sentenced to death by hanging by Judge Hall, Celia’s original execution was set for November 16, 1855. However, Celia escaped from jail for nearly 2 weeks, briefly delaying the execution. On December 14, 1855, the Missouri Supreme Court denied her appeal. On December 21, 1855, at just 19 years old, Celia was unjustly executed by hanging at the Callaway County Courthouse in Fulton, Missouri. Celia’s exact interment site is unknown.