Judge's family apologizes 160 years after Dred Scott decision

The famous landmark case, Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857), declared that people of African descent, whether free or enslaved, were not American citizens and, therefore, had no legal standing to sue in federal court. The decision also ruled the Missouri Compromise as unconstitutional and thus prevented African Americans from pursuing freedom in states or territories where slavery had been abolished. The Dred Scott decision sparked heated discussions over the future expansion of slavery, the rise of Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party, and eventually a civil war that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. Slavery was finally abolished first under the Emancipation Proclamation (1862) and the Thirteenth Amendment (1865), which overturned the Dred Scott decision.

According to the Atlanta Black Star, descendants of the Scott and Taney families will gather together at the Taney statue for a historic apology and to speak against its removal. They hope to inspire reconciliation with a proposal to erect statues of Dred Scott and Frederick Douglass standing in positions of dialogue with Chief Justice Taney, along with an educational display on the Dred Scott decision and its aftermath.

Most historians today agree that this ruling, or more accurately abomination, was one of the worst decisions ever decided in the Supreme Court's history. I hope that this formal apology is a first step to a greater discussion around truth and reconciliation regarding America's past with slavery. Americans need to make amends with its past over the issue of slavery. In addition to Georgetown, more prominent elite institutions such as Columbia and Harvard have begun to investigate its ties with slavery. Most importantly, we must not forget our history--even the painful facts--because future generations need to learn from the mistakes of the past.

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) – A family member of the chief justice who presided over the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott decision has apologized to the family of the slave who tried to sue for his freedom.

On Monday, the 160-year anniversary of the decision, Charles Taney IV of Greenwich, Connecticut, stood a few feet from a statue of his great-great-grand-uncle Roger Brooke Taney outside the Maryland State House and apologized for the decision, in which Roger Taney wrote that African-Americans could not have rights of their own and were inferior to white people. Roger Taney lived in Maryland.

"You can't hide from the words that Taney wrote," Taney said. "You can't run, you can't hide, you can't look away. You have to face them."