Solomon Porter was a free man of color and a native of Tennessee who petitioned to reside in Shelby County around 1844.

This petition was written in response to an Act that the Tennessee General Assembly passed on 1842 February 4 requiring free persons of color to petition for residency in their respective counties. It stated that "no negro or person of color shall obtain the benefit of this act [to temporarily reside in Tennessee], except such as are natives to this State, and such as were in this State before the 1st day of January, 1836; and hereafter, in emancipating slaves, it shall be upon the conditions of their leaving and removing from the State…" The Act was designed to address the concerns of pro-slavery legislators, who feared that although free blacks formed a tiny minority of Tennessee's population, a surplus of freemen could foment sedition among slaves. Indeed, some organizations (for example the Tennessee Colonization Society) were paid ten dollars a person to export freemen to Liberia and so reduce their numbers in Tennessee. Later legislation gradually reduced the legal status of freemen to near-slavery by the outbreak of the Civil War.