Dred Scott

1799 – 1858

Dred Scott was an enslaved man who, with his wife Harriet, filed a freedom suit in 1846 arguing that years of residence in the free state of Illinois and the free Wisconsin Territory had made them legally free under Missouri's long-standing "once free, always free" precedent. The case reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled against him in March 1857, declaring that no Black person could be a U.S. citizen, a decision widely considered the worst in the Court's history.