Featuring: Larry Kenneth Alexander
Transcript:
In 1857, the Supreme Court’s decision in Dred Scott v. Sanford sent shockwaves through the nation. Relying on the Declaration of Independence, the Court declared that Black people, whether free or enslaved, could never be American citizens because the Founding Fathers allegedly did not intend to include them in the assertion that “all men are created equal.” This was a blatant mischaracterization of the Declaration. The Court editorialized that at the time, Black people were regarded as “beings of an inferior order” who were “unfit to associate with the white race” in either social or political relations. Furthermore, the Court stated that Black people had “no legal rights which the white man was bound to respect.”
This decision intensified sectional tensions in the United States by stripping Black people of their legal rights and empowering pro-slavery forces. Moreover, it demonstrated how the Court could entrench systemic injustice by prioritizing contemporary political or ideological concerns over constitutional principles. The Dred Scott decision is widely regarded as a low point in the Supreme Court’s history.
Decades earlier, in 1785, Thomas Jefferson had warned of the moral corrosiveness that slavery would bring. He foresaw that America’s foundation—built on the ideals of liberty and equality—would be compromised by the stain of human bondage. Jefferson recognized that racial tyranny, nurtured by the cruel institution of slavery, would not only corrupt the slaveholders but also poison the nation’s soul. His fears were realized during the Civil War, a conflict born of racial tyranny and America’s unique form of despotism: Black slavery.
In their quest for unity, the framers of the Constitution had made compromises that protected slavery. Though practical at the time, these compromises exposed a profound hypocrisy at the heart of the American experiment. How could a republic founded on liberty and equality coexist with a Southern society rooted in human bondage? The moral reckoning Jefferson warned of could no longer be avoided, and it tore the Union apart.
In 1865, after four years of relentless bloodshed, the Civil War ended. The Confederacy was defeated, the Union was preserved, and slavery was officially abolished with the 13th Amendment. However, victory came at an unimaginable cost, as the Civil War remains the deadliest conflict in American history. While a Republican-led Congress abolished slavery, abolitionist Wendell Phillips aptly declared in 1865, “We have abolished the slave, but the master remains.” This bitter truth reflected the reality that while the institution of slavery was dismantled, the racial hierarchies and systems of white supremacy that nurtured and sustained it were left intact.
Despite the passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, the Supreme Court weakened these protections with decisions like the Slaughterhouse Cases in 1873 and United States v. Cruikshank in 1876. Legal emancipation was not enough. True liberty and equality for Black people remained elusive. This enduring struggle challenges the notion that Black Americans were excluded from the Declaration of Independence or legally owned as chattel by white patriots when independence was declared in 1776.
The Dred Scott decision has never been judicially overturned and was recently cited for the proposition that the broad philosophical principles of the Declaration cannot serve as a basis for judicially enforceable rights. This aligns with certain interpretations, such as those in the Kansas Constitution, which recognize abortion rights as liberty rights to be protected. The invocation of the Dred Scott decision, as it reflects the pro-slavery ideology of the time, is deeply problematic and must be discredited and judicially overturned.
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