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Class Year

2026

Document Type

Article

Abstract

This article argues that Mary Elizabeth Wayt Lanning Booth, most commonly known as Lizzie Booth, played a decisive and underrecognized role in securing pension rights for Black widows during the Civil War. In the wake of her husband’s death at the Fort Pillow Massacre in 1864, Booth personally lobbied President Abraham Lincoln and Senator Charles Sumner for pension reform, catalyzing the passage of the Supplemental Pension Act. This reform permitted formerly enslaved women—whose marriages had been deemed extralegal—to prove their unions through eyewitness testimony and access federal benefits. Drawing primarily on pension files, the article demonstrates that while the Act marked a crucial first step toward racial equality within the pension bureaucracy, it fell short of ensuring universal, sustained access due to bureaucratic delays, racialized definitions of marriage, and discriminatory enforcement. Nevertheless, by securing the extension of pension access to Black widows, Booth enabled them to assert claims to citizenship within the federal bureaucracy, transforming their relationship with the state and advancing civil rights during and after the Civil War.

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