Ohio’s 1807 black laws included an additional and particularly unjust provision: It forbade Black and mulatto persons from testifying in court cases involving whites. That kind of law was increasingly typical in slaveholding states, and Ohio’s adoption of it in 1807 suggests the legislature’s determination to further diminish the advantages free African Americans would enjoy if they migrated to Ohio. Without the same right as whites to testify in court, African Americans would have little ability to defend their most basic rights—to enforce contracts, secure wages, or obtain justice in
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