Emiliano Mundrucu
Emiliano Mundrucu (1791-1863) was a Brazilian soldier, abolitionist, and civil rights activist. He is thought to have been the first plaintiff in a lawsuit in the United States against racial discrimination and segregation although the cause of action was breach of contract. Biography. Born in Recife, Brazil, Mundrucu initially distinguished himself in the Brazilian military, rising to the rank of captain in a pardo battalion. Mundrucu was part of two popular rebellions in Pernambuco, northeast state of Brazil. In 1817 and 1824, he fought for the independence of the Pernambuco State from the Portuguese Kingdom alongside Joaquim  Saldanha Marinho and J. M. de Carvalho..Ultimately, his association with firebrand Brazilian republicanism put him at odds with the Portuguese monarchy, forcing him to flee Brazil when the Confederação do Equador failed. He briefly spent time in two young South American and Caribbean republics between 1824 and 1826, enlisting in the Venezuelan army and travelling to Haiti. Thereafter, Mundrucu settled in Boston, although he did travel back to Brazil on several occasions. In 1833, trying to board the “Telegraph”, a steamboat heading to Boston, with his wife and daughter, Mundrucu was impeded in entering the cabin that he had  paid for. Mundrucu sued Edward Barker, a Massachusetts steamboat captain, for refusing to allow him and his family passage in the whites-only cabins of a vessel traveling from New Bedford to Nantucket, Massachusetts. In the Boston Court of Common Pleas, the plaintiff's lawyers appealed to the jury to consider Captain Edward Barker's actions a 'violation of humanity.' The case garnered local and national attention as a pivotal moment in early campaigns against racial discrimination and segregation. The jury found Barker guilty of breach of contract and awarded Mundrucu $125 in damages in October 1833, but the  captain managed to overturn the decision in January 1834 in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, which found there was no evidence that Barker had explicitly agreed that the family would travel in the best cabins. Mundrucu's contribution the U.S. civil rights and abolitionist movement continued after the 1833-34 court case. In 1841, he returned to Boston and in subsequent decades became a prominent activist against segregation in schools, transport and public spaces, while also advocating for full citizenship rights for African Americans. In January 1863, he stood shoulder to shoulder with Frederick Douglass and other prominent African American  abolitionists as they celebrated the Emancipation Proclamation. Historians Belton Lloyd and Hebe Mattos raise the possibility that Mundrucu’s attempt of getting inside the “whites-only” cabin as an intentional act of resistance.