By Keishera Lately
As part of Black History Month, Lincoln University hosted an evening with Lynne M. Jackson, the great-great granddaughter of Dred Scott, with her presentation, “The Faces of Reconciliation.”
Her family’s famous abolitionist case began in 1847 in a St. Louis federal courthouse, when Dred Scott unsuccessfully argued for his freedom from slavery. The Dred Scott legal saga would eventually land in the U.S. Supreme Court as Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857).
Scott lost his legal fight, but was ultimately freed just months before dying in St. Louis in 1858. Although Scott was unsuccessful in the courts, his legal battles rallied the abolitionists and helped carve a path to the U.S. Civil War, ultimately ending slavery in America.
Jackson is the president and founder of the Dred Scott Heritage Foundation. The foundation’s goal is to “Promote the commemoration,education,and reconciliation of our histories with an eye towards helping to heal the wounds of the past.” Through the foundation she has been able to spread her knowledge of her grandfather and the history of the landmark case.
“Them taking the case federal makes it important; they had courage when they didn’t have to,” Jackson told the audience Tuesday evening in LU’s Richardson Auditorium.
Jackson was in Jefferson City to receive special recognition from the General Assembly at the Missouri Capitol.
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