Harriet Scott

I've said before: white people know nothing about black people and their history in this country, and here's another example.

I may have learned something about the horrible Dred Scott decision in high school, but it must have been one factoid among many. Somewhere along the way I found out about it, though. Maybe from Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. Or maybe I had heard that the case was based on Scott's having lived in Minnesota. By whatever means, though, I knew enough about it to have an interest in seeing the courtroom where the case was heard when I visited St. Louis in the early 1990s.

But here's an aspect of the case I've never heard before, which was written up in Curt Brown's Star Tribune history column on Sunday: It wasn't just Dred Scott who sued for his freedom, it was also his wife Harriet. And that she may have been more insistent on the legal case than even he was because their children were reaching an age when their enslavers were more likely to sell them.

There isn't a lot of information about Harriet online. I hope I remember to look for more about her instead of forgetting again.