Dred Scott
Sued for freedom
Dred Scott was an enslaved Black American whose lawsuit for freedom reached the U.S.
Supreme Court in 1857.
The Court ruled against him, declaring that Black people could not be U.S. citizens and had "no rights which the white man was bound to respect." The decision inflamed sectional tensions and helped precipitate the Civil War.
The Dred Scott decision now stands as a landmark of judicial infamy.
- slaveOwned human, forced laborer
- abolitionFormal discontinuation of practice
- Supreme CourtNation's top tribunal
- MissouriMidwestern state, major river
- slave statePolity permitting human bondage
Fugitive Slave Act · property · Missouri Compromise · Kansas-Nebraska Act · free soil · manumission · freedom · master · popular sovereignty · Sanford · Underground Railroad · Reconstruction · plantations · antebellum South · sectionalism · chattel slavery · Emancipation Proclamation · African American history
- Supreme Court CasesMarbury v. Madison, Brown v Board, Brown v. Board, Roe v Wade, Roe v. Wade
- Black HistoryMartin Luther King Jr., MLK, Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass
- 1840s-1850sOregon Trail, California Gold Rush, Mexican-American War, Manifest Destiny, Underground Railroad
- Antebellum Americaantebellum era, Compromise of 1850, sectionalism, states' rights, Fugitive Slave Act
- Black IconsMartin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Jackie Robinson
- court rulingsrulings, divorce decree, judgments, annulment, verdicts
Dred Scottcitizen
Legal national member
legal person · full citizen · naturalized citizen · birthright citizen
Dred Scottfreedman
Released former slave
Harriet Tubman · Frederick Douglass · Sojourner Truth · Nat Turner · liberator
Dred ScottThurgood Marshall
Rosa Parks · Martin Luther King Jr. · Brown v. Board of Education · freedom rider · Barack Obama
dread, dreaded, dreadful, dreadfully, dreadfulness, Scott, Scotts