by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (@lakinhutcherson)
Today’s GBN Daily Drop podcast is a bonus episode for Sunday, March 6 and based on the “A Year of Good Black News” Page-A-Day®️ Calendar for 2022 format.
It’s about an enslaved couple, Dred Scott and Harriet Robinson Scott, who sued for their freedom in federal court, which lead to the U.S. Supreme Court’s infamous and atrocious 1857 Dred Scott decision:
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SHOW TRANSCRIPT:
Hey, this Lori Lakin Hutcherson, founder and editor in chief of GoodBlackNews.org, here to share with you a bonus daily drop of Good Black News for Sunday, March 6th, 2022, based on the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar” published by Workman Publishing.
So, I had a few different ideas for this bonus episode, like doing a drop about innovative jazz guitarist Wes Montgomery, the “supreme” Mary Wilson, NBA champion Shaquille O’Neal or “King of Comedy” D.L. Hughley, who all claim March 6th as their birthday. And shout outs to them.
They may all get drops in the future, but when I learned March 6 is also the day that the infamous U.S. Supreme Court Dred Scott decision was made 165 years ago and considered to be one of the worst Supreme Court rulings in history, I wanted to drop in on that.
On March 6, 1857, Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney oversaw a 7-2 vote against the enslaved spouses Dred Scott and Harriet Scott, who were petitioning for their freedom based on the fact that they had worked and lived in free states with or for their owners.
But as agreed to in the Missouri Compromise, this gave the Scotts the right to be free. However, in the majority opinion, Chief Justice Taney stated that all people of African descent, free or enslaved, weren’t U.S. citizens and therefore did not have the right to sue in federal court, on top of arguing that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional, as well as the Kansas-Nebraska Act.
This U.S. Supreme Court decision outraged Northern politicians and abolitionists while bolstering Southern politicians and pro-slavery adherents. The debate raged so deeply that it stoked both sides to believe that only war or succession would “solve” the nation’s slavery dilemma.
Though they didn’t obtain their freedom through the justice system, the Scotts were sold to people who freed Dred and Harriet in May of 1957. Scott found work as a porter in a St. Louis hotel and lived until September 1858. Harriet lived until 1876.
In 1997, Dred Scott and Harriet Robinson Scott were posthumously inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame and five years ago on March 6, 2017, outside the Maryland State House and in front of Roger Taney’s statue, Charlie Taney, the great great grand nephew of Justice Taney, apologized on behalf of his family to Lynne M. Jackson, the great great granddaughter of Dred Scott.
In August 2017, the statue of Taney was removed from the entrance of Maryland’s State House.
To learn more about Dred Scott, Harriet Robinson Scott and the Dred Scott Decision, check out the PBS video What Was the Dred Scott Decision?, the 2019 book Dred Scott: The Inside Story by David Hardy, 2016’s Dred Scott v. Sanford: A Brief History With Documents by Paul Finkelman, and the 2009 book on Harriet Scott called Mrs. Dred Scott: A Life on Slavery’s Frontier by Lea Vandervelde.
Links to these and other sources are provided in today’s show notes and in the episode’s full transcript posted on goodblacknews.org.
This has been a bonus daily drop of Good Black News, based on the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar for 2022,” published by Workman Publishing. Beats provided by freebeats.io and produced by White Hot.
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For more Good Black News, you can check out goodblacknews.org or search and follow @goodblacknews anywhere on social.
Sources:
- https://www.pbs.org/video/american-experience-what-was-dred-scott-decision/
- https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/from-a-descendant-of-roger-taney-to-a-descendant-of-dred-scott-im-sorry/2017/03/06/d2871308-0286-11e7-b1e9-a05d3c21f7cf_story.html
- https://news.stlpublicradio.org/show/st-louis-on-the-air/2020-09-22/thursday-the-effort-to-make-dred-scotts-grave-a-place-worthy-of-pilgrimage
- https://www.nps.gov/people/harriet-robinson-scott.htm?utm_source=person&utm_medium=website&utm_campaign=experience_more&utm_content=large
- https://www.phillytrib.com/commentary/michaelcoard/coard-15-things-you-didnt-know-about-dred-scott-case/article_74fb153f-8bd6-5f38-b9a9-19dbe2adb394.htmlhttps://www.history.com/topics/black-history/dred-scott-case
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For generations we couldn’t read legally; then during reconstruction we were terrorized for reading; then we were poorly educated in reading. Now, dramatically they’re back to terrorism against all teachers.
Thanks for this history lesson.