Saturday, March 15, 2008
Gala
Dinner in Honor of the Dred Scott 150th Anniversary hosted
at the Hilton St. Louis at the Ballpark in Downtown St.
Louis.
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Remember
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Scott Heritage Foundation.
To make a tax deductible donation to The Dred Scott Heritage Foundation
please mail your payment to:
The
Dred Scott Heritage Foundaion
211 N. Broadway,
Suite 3600
St. Louis, MO 63102
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OVERVIEW THE
DRED SCOTT HERITAGE FOUNDATION
 Lynne
M. Jackson,
Founder
Heritage:
Great-great granddaughter of Dred
and Harriet Scott
of the Dred Scott Decision, 1857
Education:
Bachelor of Science in Business Administration/
Marketing,
Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville
Graduate of Alleda Ward Wells Piano Studio of St. Louis
Professional
Experience:
General Services Manager, Bryan Cave LLP
Employee Relations Associate, Ford Motor Company
Supervisor of Data Entry, CASS Logistics – Cass Commercial
Corporation
Business Operations Director, Girl Scout Council of Greater St.
Louis
Board Memberships: (past and present)
Association of Legal Administrators
Mission Metro St. Louis
Administrative Management Society
Black Women’s Entrepreneurial Network (President 3 of 10
years)
Community Women Against Hardship (Past Vice President )
Christian Women’s Enterprise Network (Founder 2003), a
PARRC ministry
Additional
Ministries and Volunteer Activities:
Co-Founder and President of PARRC Research,
Inc.
The Prophecy and Apologetic Research and Resource Center
An apologetics and evidentiary lay ministry in St. Louis, MO
Sunday School Superintendent for Junior High at Antioch Baptist
Church 10 years
Vacation Bible School Director, Curriculum Development
National Day of Prayer Speaker 2004
National Day of Prayer Committee 2005
Global Day of Prayer Committee 2005 -2007
Ethnic Workers Summit Committee 2008 St. Louis Conference
Published
and media works:
Wrote, hosted and produced PARRC Presents,
a 30 minute apologetic show for cable television
Workshop speaker for Young Ladies of Integrity
Mrs. Jackson is available for limited speaking engagements.
Please forward your requests via email to: info@thedredscottfoundation.org
To
review our Press Release Archives, click this link: Dred
Scott Heritage Foundation Archives
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The
Foundation's Purpose
The Dred Scott Heritage Foundation was
established in June of 2006. It's first
purpose is to support the acknowledgment of the 150th
Anniversary of the Dred Scott Decision and support the attendant
commemorative events that will mark this momentous occasion.
This includes the creation of a lifesize statue of Dred Scott
as a memorial to the man and his cause to be located near the
original site where Dred and his wife Harriet first filed their
case, the Old Courthouse in downtown St. Louis. Anticipated for
2008.
The second purpose is to be a vehicle for
expanding the learning opportunties for individuals to be more educated about
this case, its impact on slavery and the history of our nation. Under the umbrella
of this foundation, a multitude of educational venues are being presented in
2007 by St. Louis community groups who have joined together called Friends of
the 150th Anniversary of the Dred Scott Decision. A wide range of year long activities
have already begun that will broaden the understanding of all the facets of this
case during it's nearly 11 year ordeal.
Documentaries and media presentations are being planned for future teaching tools
that will broaden the understanding of the facts and principles behind the history
that lead up to the Dred Scott Case and other important events in our country’s
past that make up who we are. They are also intended to help us define who we
want to become.
The third purpose is to support the community
as it proceeds to evaluate the lessons learned from the 2007 recognition. Many
racial reconciliation issues continue to go unresolved and many successes go
unheralded. The Dred Scott Heritage Foundation will use its resources to create
venues to "Let The Healing Begin"™. Also, scholarship
funds will be established for individals planning careers in history, law, science
and math.
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Dred
Scott
Dred Scott
was the name of an enslaved man of “100 percent pure “ African
descent. Dred’s case was predicated on the fact that he
was taken by his master, an officer in the U.S. Army, from the slave
state of Missouri to the free state of Illinois and then to the free
territory of Wisconsin. He lived on free soil for a long period of
time.
Born in Southhampton, Virginia, in his youth, Dred Scott' was known
as "Sam." He later changed his name to Dred Scott. He moved
with his master to Huntsville, Alabama and later to St. Louis, Missouri.
In 1831 his owner, Peter Blow, died and John Emerson, a surgeon in
the U.S. Army, bought him. He accompanied his new master to Illinois
(a free state) and Wisconsin (a territory). While in what is now
Minnesota, around 1836 he met and married Harriett Robinson.. In
1843 Emerson died and left his estate to his widow Irene Emerson,
who refused Scott his freedom. He then obtained the assistance of
two attorneys who helped him to sue for his freedom in court.
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The
Story
One of the most important cases ever tried in the United States was heard in
St. Louis' Old Courthouse. The Supreme Court decided the case in 1857, and hastened
the start of the Civil War.
When the first case was first filed in 1846, Dred Scott was in his late 40s.
He was born in Virginia around 1799, and was the property, as his parents had
been, of the Peter Blow family. He had spent his entire life as a slave, and
never got the opportunity to learn to read. Dred Scott moved to St. Louis with
the Blows in 1830, but was soon sold due to Blow’s financial problems.
He was purchased by Dr. John Emerson, a military surgeon stationed at Jefferson
Barracks, in south St. Louis and accompanied him to posts in Illinois and the
Wisconsin Territory, where slavery had been prohibited by the Missouri Compromise
of 1820. During this period, Dred Scott married Harriet Robinson, also a slave,
at Fort Snelling; they later had four children, two boys that died in infancy
and two girls, Eliza and Lizzie. John Emerson married Irene Sanford during a
brief stay in Louisiana. In 1842, the Scott's returned with Dr. and Mrs. Emerson
to St. Louis. John Emerson died the following year, and it is believed that Mrs.
Emerson hired out Dred Scott, Harriet, and their children to work for other families.
On April 6th, 1846, Dred Scott and his wife Harriet filed suit against Irene
Emerson for their freedom. For several years, Scott had lived in free territories,
yet made no attempt to end his servitude. It is not known for sure why he chose
this particular time for the suit, although historians have considered three
possibilities: He may have been dissatisfied with being hired out; Mrs. Emerson
might have been planning to sell him; as well as he offered to buy his own freedom
and been refused. It is known that the suit was not brought for political reasons.
Most likely, friends in St. Louis who opposed slavery had encouraged Scott to
sue for his freedom on the grounds that he had once lived in a free territory.
In the past, Missouri courts supported the doctrine of "once free, always
free." Dred Scott could not read or write and had no money. He needed help
with his suit. John Anderson, the Scott's minister, may have been influential
in their decision to sue, and the Blow family, Dred's original owners, backed
him financially. The support of such friends helped the Scotts through nearly
eleven years of complex and often disappointing litigation.
It is difficult to understand today, but under the law in 1846 whether or not
the Scotts were entitled to their freedom was not as important as the consideration
of property rights. If slaves were indeed valuable property, like a car or an
expensive home today, could they be taken away from their owners because of where
the owner had taken them? In other words, if you drove your car from Missouri
to Illinois, and the State of Illinois said that it was illegal to own a car
in Illinois, could the authorities take the car away from you when you returned
to Missouri? These were the questions being discussed in the Dred Scott case,
with one major difference: your car is not human, and cannot sue you. Although
few whites considered the human factor in Dred Scott's slave suit, today we acknowledge
that it is wrong to hold people against their will and force them to work as
people did in the days of slavery.
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The
Case
The
Dred Scott case was first brought to trial in 1847 on the first floor,
west wing courtroom of St. Louis' Old Courthouse. The Scotts lost
the first trial because hearsay evidence was presented, but they
were granted the right by the judge to a second trial. In the second
trial, held in the same courtroom in 1850, a jury 12 white men heard
the evidence and decided that Dred Scott and his family should be
free. Slaves were valuable property, and Mrs. Emerson did not want
to lose the Scotts, so she appealed her case to the Missouri State
Supreme Court, which in 1852 reversed the ruling made at the Old
Courthouse, stating that "times now are not as they were when
the previous decisions on this subject were made." The slavery
issue was becoming more divisive nationwide, and provided the court
with political reasons to return Dred Scott to slavery. The court
was saying that Missouri law allowed slavery, and it would uphold
the rights of slave-owners in the state at all costs.
Dred Scott was not ready to give up in his fight for freedom for himself
and his family, however. With the help of a new team of lawyers who
hated slavery, Dred Scott filed suit in St. Louis Federal Court in
1854 against John F.A. Sanford, Mrs. Emerson's brother and executor
of the Emerson estate. Since Sanford resided in New York, the case
was taken to the Federal courts due to diversity of residence. The
suit was heard not in the Old Courthouse but in the Papin Building,
near the area where the north leg of the Gateway Arch stands today.
The case was decided in favor of Sanford, but Dred Scott appealed to
the U.S. Supreme Court.
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The
Decision
On March 6, 1857, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney delivered
the majority opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court in the Dred Scott
case. Seven of the nine justices agreed that Dred Scott should
remain a slave, but Taney did not stop there. He also ruled that
as a slave, Dred Scott was not a citizen of the United States,
and therefore had no right to bring suit in the federal courts
on any matter. In addition, he declared that Scott had never
been free, due to the fact that slaves were personal property;
thus the Missouri Compromise of 1820 was unconstitutional, and
the Federal Government had no right to prohibit slavery in the
new territories. The court appeared to be sanctioning slavery
under the terms of the Constitution itself, and saying that slavery
could not be outlawed or restricted within the United States.
The American public reacted very strongly to the Dred Scott Decision. Antislavery
groups feared that slavery would spread unchecked. The new Republican Party,
founded in 1854 to prohibit the spread of slavery, renewed their fight to gain
control of Congress and the courts. Their well-planned political campaign of
1860, coupled with divisive issues that split the Democratic Party, led to the
election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States and South Carolina's
secession from the Union. The Dred Scott Decision moved the country to the brink
of Civil War.
Ironically, Irene Emerson was remarried in 1850 to Calvin C. Chaffee, a northern
congressman opposed to slavery. After the Supreme Court decision, Mrs. Chaffee
turned Dred and Harriet Scott and their two daughters over to Dred's old friends,
the Blows, who gave the Scotts their freedom on May 26, 1857. On September 17,
1858, Dred Scott died of tuberculosis and was buried in St. Louis at the old
Weslyan Cemetery near the streets that are now Laclede and Grand. His grave was
moved in the 1860s to Calvary Cemetery in northern St. Louis. His gravesite at
Calvary was marked due to the efforts of the Rev. Edward Dowling in 1957 of the
Baden Historical Society. .
Dred Scott did not live to see the fratricidal war touched off at Fort Sumter
in 1861, but did live to gain his freedom. The ultimate result of the war, the
end of slavery throughout the United States, was not something Dred Scott could
have foreseen in 1846, when he decided to sue for his freedom in St. Louis' Old
Courthouse.
However, his
life, his purpose and indeed his destiny was to be forever a most integral
part of the destruction of an institution that when abolished, in large
part because of the perseverence of Dred and Harriet Scott, freed not
only a people but a nation from the grip of an unspeakable evil.
*Portions
of the above information published
by permission of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial
& The Old Court House.
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2007 FEATURED COMMEMORATIVE
ACTIVITIES
The commemoration, which will be
carried forward by many programs and events between January
and December of 2007, will be community-wide in scope ranging
from the local Black Repertory Theater to several area universities,
local history groups, black tourism groups, public libraries,
historical societies, church organizations, abolition education,
groups that provide aid to at-risk youth, poetic presentations,
cultural organizations, genealogy workshops, literary and presentation
contests, and many other unique partnerships. Check the website
regularly for updates throughout the year.
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Saturday,
January 15 – Kickoff
of Dred Scott Commemoration at Jefferson National Expansion Memorial (JNEM) on Martin
Luther King Day.
www.nps.gov
Thursday,
February 1 –
10:00am-11:00am – St. Louis Black Repertory Theater presents No
Land’s Man: A Chapter in the Lives of Harriet and Dred Scott that
commemorates the 150th anniversary of the Dred Scott Supreme Court
decision. Actors from the Black Repertory Theater will portray the
moment in history as Dred and Harriet Scott ponder their legal struggle
to become "free" citizens in the state of Missouri. See schedule
for Black Rep performances.
www.theblackrep.org
Monday,
February 26 –
The Eugene Field House & St. Louis Toy Museum will be
opening with two all new exhibitions and a multi-media experience.
This new phase for the museum is designed to commemorate the 150th
anniversary of the Dred Scott Decision. The Dred Scott Case is one
of the great landmarks of American law, with a direct link leading
from this slave freedom suit to the election of President Lincoln,
the ensuing Civil War, and the 13th ,14th, and 15th Amendments which
followed.
www.eugenefieldhouse.org
Missouri
Historical Society (MHS) - Black History Exhibit: Visit the
exhibit on Dred Scott in the North Loggia, just behind the Jefferson
Statue. It contains a number of documents MHS owns which pertains
to the Scott case. It will remain on view through Sunday, April
1st.
www.mohistory.org
Thursday,
March 1 – Saturday,
March 3 – Washington
University in St. Louis will host a major national symposium
entitled, The Dred Scott Case and Its Legacy: Race, Law
and the Struggle for Equality. Beginning with a keynote
address by Missouri State Supreme Court Chief Justice Michael
Wolff, scholars will examine the role of law and the courts
in fighting (as well as protecting) legally sanctioned racial
inequality. The symposium will inquire into the legal strategies
of black and white abolitionists before 1857 as well as efforts
from Reconstruction to the present to make meaningful the full
legal citizenship that the decision denied. Sessions will be
free and open to the public, and will include special sessions
on Saturday, March 3 devoted to community awareness and the
needs of K-12 educators. For more information, contact Prof.
David Konig at Washington University, at 935-5459.
http://law.wustl.edu/centeris/index.asp?ID=5296
To
commemorate the 150th anniversary of Dred and Harriet Scott, The
St. Louis Public Library has the Traveling Trunks and
a program presented by the St. Louis Black Rep at Schlafly
Branch Library entitled No Land's Man: A Chapter In the Lives
of Harriet and Dred Scott.
www.slpl.org
Traveling
Trunks:
Discover Dred Scott and his Struggle for Freedom @ the St. Louis Public
Library.
Dred Scott Traveling Trunk available for check out Thursday, March
1, 2007.
Designed for grades 4-12, the Traveling Trunk contains books, images,
maps, and educational activities.
Borrow a Dred Scott Traveling Trunk with a valid St. Louis Public Library
card.
For more information contact Kathy Muller, Central Library Youth
Services Department at 314-539-0380
Saturday, March
3 – Sunday,
March 4 – Special weekend commemoration of the Dred
Scott Decision at JNEM. Opening of the Dred Scott exhibit at JNEM’s
Old Courthouse, premiere of new video. Launch of special website pages.
Re-enactment of the 1852 trial with special guest judges. Winners of the
student writing contest are announced.
Tuesday,
March 6 – Descendants of Dred and Harriet Scott
commemorate the anniversary at the St. Louis Public Library with Mayor
Slay and city and county officials, presenting special Resolutions.
Immediately following will be the unveiling of the Collector's Edition
Dred Scott cachet envelope and anniversary postal cancellation stamp.
The Black Rep performs their touring play about Dred and Harriet called “No
Man’s Land” prior to gravesite memorial events at Greenwood
and Calvary Cemeteries. Estimated arrival time at Greenwood will be
approximately 12:30pm. The public is invited. Events begin at the Public
Library at 10:00am sharp!
Tuesday,
March 6 – The
150th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision
in Dred Scott v. Sandford. Special activities
at JNEM include a special on-line educational event
commemorating the trial’s significance from the
site where it happened.
Saturday,
May 26 – Events commemorating
the 150th anniversary of the emancipation of the
Scotts by Taylor Blow in the Old Courthouse.
Monday,
September 17 – Constitution
Day; events commemorating the Dred Scott case and
other Civil Rights cases.
Sunday,
September 30 – Dred Scott will be the
recipient of the 2007 Gateway Classic Walk of Fame Diamond
Award, presented by Mr. Earl Wilson.
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Your
donations and support are greatly appreciated and tax deductible.
Please send your donations made payable to:
The Dred Scott Heritage Foundation,
211 North Broadway
Ste 3600 St. Louis, MO 63102
The Foundation is a registered 501 C 3 Corporation in the United States of America.
Thank you!
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To
review our Press Release Archives, click this link: Dred
Scott Heritage Foundation Archives
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