The Most Important Events That Changed History Forever

Dred Scott Decision (1857)

The Dred Scott decision, also known as Dred Scott v. Sandford, was a landmark decision made by the U.S. Supreme Court which determined that the Constitution did not uphold rights or citizenship for Black people. Scott was an enslaved Black man whose owners had taken him from a slave state to a state where slavery was illegal; he sued for his freedom in court once his owners returned him to Missouri. The rulings were voided by the Thirteenth Amendment, and the decision has been universally denounced as the worst in Supreme Court history.