Elmina Slenker

Elmina Slenker was a freethought writer, atheist and birth control advocate, in Snowville, Virginia. Postal investigators began correspondence with her using pseudonyms in order to obtain letters from her which could be used to charge her with obscenity. On April 28, 1887, she was arrested under the federal Comstock postal-obscenity law and held on $2,000 bail, principally at the Wytheville Jail. Indicted on July 12, she went on trial in Abingdon on October 31 and was found guilty of mailing allegedly obscene writings. On November 4, 1887, the conviction was overturned — the indictment failed to allege that she knew the writings were legally obscene — and Slenker was released.