Wednesday, December 14, 2016

DRED AND HARRIET SCOTT REMEMBERED

I attended this historical gathering in March 2007, where I met, greeted, questioned, lauded, laughed with, got autographs from, some of the leading lights of African American legal history. I also attended its many seminars and receptions. Few black lawyers from Missouri were present. Their absence from this major historical forum was disappointing to me, whose love of black history may someday be legendary. But, what matters most is to know that Dred Scott and his wife, Harriet, were freed in May 1857. Even after losing the U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1857 which apocalyptically produced John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, Civil War, Amendments to the Constitution and enabling legislation: more importantly, their loss sparked freedom for all enslaved African Americans. In their legal defeat lay the veritable foundation of was our later freedom victories, which defeat freed them before any! http://www.thedredscottfoundation.org/dshf/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=47&Itemid=80 http://digital.wustl.edu/dredscott/about.html