(Describer) Title: Living STL.

[upbeat music]

(Describer) Jim Kirchherr.

Our country and our community, well, we're facing a lot of difficult issues these days, and future generations will assess the actions we take and the decisions we make. Because after all, we inherited a lot from the people who came before. Ruth Ezell has a story that falls into the category of history, but really, at one time, obviously, it was current events, and those current events helped shape our world today.

[birds chirping]

(Describer) A simple one-roomed shack.

(speaker) My great-great-grandfather was born on a plantation in Southampton, Virginia. He was born to the Blow family. They eventually moved to St. Louis.

(Ruth) This is an excerpt from the series, "A More or Less Perfect Union," which debuted on the Nine Network April 15th. It examines key issues of liberty through the lens of the U.S. Constitution, including a case that began at the old courthouse and ended in a U.S. Supreme Court decision, denying an ancestor of Lynne Jackson freedom from slavery.

(Lynn) Well, at first it was just about their family, but ultimately, it was about a nation. And my ancestor was Dred Scott.

(Ruth) Jackson is president and founder of the Dred Scott Heritage Foundation. She's intimately acquainted with the high court's infamous ruling against her great-great-grandfather in 1857. When you read the Supreme Court, U.S. Supreme Court ruling for the first time, what went through your mind? Because there were some vicious things said in that. Yes, there were, and it was very long too, because most people don't read that whole thing. It's 80 pages long. But what comes out of it is those words that we are all familiar with, that Blacks had no rights that whites were bound to respect. And it also says in a very demeaning and cruel way, that Blacks were beings of an inferior order, in fact, so far inferior that they really shouldn't associate with the white race on any level.

[cannon firing]

(Describer) A war reenactment.

(Ruth) The Dred Scott decision is considered a major factor in hastening the start of the Civil War. In 1865, eight months after the war ended, the 13th Amendment to the Constitution abolishing slavery was ratified. Section one of the amendment reads, "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, "except as a punishment for crime, "whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, "shall exist within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction." The Dred Scott Amendments are the ones 13, 14, and 15, in that order, abolished slavery, gave citizenship to former slaves and all persons born or naturalized in the United States, which included them, and then the 15th gave the right to vote. So those are also called the Dred Scott Amendments, because due to his case, there was this war that ended slavery and brought about these changes.

(Ruth) Lynne Jackson was one of many voices who contributed to "A More or Less Perfect Union," hosted by U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Douglas Ginsburg. Judge Ginsburg was scheduled to come to St. Louis in March in his role as honorary chair of the Dred Scott Freedom Awards Dinner. But the onset of the coronavirus canceled that event, and our plans for a studio interview. So instead, we connected online to talk about the series and about the judge's fears that many Americans don't know enough about the document that governs the people who govern us. Most people have some of the attitude or opinion about the Constitution, but most of them haven't read it. And that's a glaring problem in our society. We are citizens who are increasingly ignorant. And young people, the younger they are, the more recently they went to school, the less they know. Civics education has been downgraded or eliminated in many school systems, and there's a backlash now. I'm part of it. I feel very strongly that when I grew up in St. Louis, we had an exceptional educational system, and we got an excellent education. You know that, we all know that. And so, yeah, but even then, they only said that Dred Scott was a slave who sued for his freedom and he lost. They never said a whole lot more about that, even in my classes. And no one understood the significance of the case about the war and all of that.

[patriotic music]

And not having civics is a difficult thing. If we don't stand against this, we're gonna lose a lot of who we are and where we came from.

(Ruth) For "Living St. Louis," I'm Ruth Ezell.