BILLY ECKSTINE
1857—Perhaps the most thoroughly racist decision ever rendered by a U.S. Supreme Court is released on this day—the Dred Scott decision. Scott and his wife, Harriet, had sued in St. Louis Circuit Court claiming they were free because their slave master had taken them from a slave state to the free territory of Missouri. However, in a majority opinion written by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney the court ruled: 1) Blacks, be they slave or free, were not and could not be U.S. citizens and thus were not entitled to file suit in U.S. courts, 2) Denied Congress the power to restrict slavery by declaring the 1820 Missouri Compromise unconstitutional, 3) Declared that where the Constitution said, “All men are created equal,” the phrase did not include Blacks, and 4) Told African Americans that they “had no rights the White man was bound to respect.”
However, reflecting the law of unintended consequences, the Dred Scott decision was so harsh and so angered anti-slavery forces that it helped pave the way for the Civil War which ended all slavery in America.
1539—This is probably the day Estevanico—the first Black conquistador—was killed. Estevanico, a Black Moor from Morocco, was sold as a servant when he was only 10 but became friends with his owner Andres de Dorantes and joined a 1527 expedition of 300 men from Spain looking for riches in what would later become the U.S. state of Florida. All but four members of the expedition were wiped out by the Indians they tried to conquer. Estevanico was among those who survived. He was held captive for five years but became a “medicine man” and learned the languages of various tribes. He eventually escaped and in February of 1539 led an expedition to Culiacan, Mexico looking for one of the fabled lost city of gold—El Dorado. It was doing this expedition that he was killed.
1965—On this day in Black history, the first leg of the Selma-to-Montgomery march is…
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