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3/6 The U.S. Supreme Court – Vs – Dred Scott Decision ruled that blacks could not sue in federal court to be citizens

03/06/2025 Nativegrl77

The Case of Dred Scott in the United States Supreme Court

In an infamous decision, the US Supreme Court ruled in 1857 that American negros were not US citizens and that they couldn’t hear his case. Not only that but as Dred Scott was a slave, he was the property of his masters and the court ruled it could not take property away without compensation.

Born a slave and for many years owned by an army officer, Dred Scott had lived in Wisconsin, where slavery was banned. After his owner’s death he tried to purchase his freedom but was refused and his case, based on the fact he had lived in Wisconsin, worked it way through the Missouri state courts before reaching the US Supreme Court.

The case shows the tension between the north and south in the years leading up to the civil war. The decision was only overturned after the civil war by the passing of the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth amendments.

Location signed: Washington, D.C., USA

Source: Smithsonian

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Logan Act … why it was created

03/05/2025 Nativegrl77

Logan Act

Dr. George Logan of Pennsylvania attempted to normalize relations with France. He entered into negotiations with France, without authorization, in the hopes of resuming normal relations. In 1799, Congress passed legislation outlawing such contacts between foreign governments and private individuals. The law remains in the books to this day.

In early 1807, a British squadron was stationed off the coast of Virginia. They were there primarily to intercept French frigates, which had taken refuge in Annapolis, Maryland. From time to time, the British vessels made use of American port facilities. British sailors were constantly deserting their ships. This became a major irritant to the British. Three deserters were said to have enlisted on the American naval frigate “Chesapeake.” The British protested, and the Secretary of Navy ordered an inquiry. This inquiry confirmed that three deserters from the “Melampus” had indeed enlisted on the “Chesapeake,” but it was determined that the sailors were Americans who had been illegally impressed. This was transmitted to the British, and the matter seemed to be at an end.

Nevertheless, the British commander in charge of the North Atlantic issued an order to search the “Chesapeake” for deserters, if the ship were encountered at sea. The “Chesapeake” was commanded by Captain Charles Gordon, and had Commodore Barron on board. On June 22, the ship departed from Hampton Roads, headed for the Mediterranean Sea. At 3:30 p.m., the British frigate the “Leopard” came down before the wind. The crew hailed the “Chesapeake,” stating that it had dispatches for the Commodore Barron. Barron replied “We will heave to and you can send your boat on board of us.” At 3:45 p.m., the “Leopard’s” Lieutenant Meade arrived with the following note demanding that the British deserters be turned over.

Since the deserters from the Melampus were not on the list submitted, Captain Gordon believed that his assurance would suffice, and sent back a stern reply to the British.

After the British officer had departed, Barron showed the notes to his other officers. While he felt that the matters was closed, he realized that some show of strength was appropriate. Therefore, Barron ordered Gordon to clear the gun deck. Unfortunately, it took 30 minutes to prepare the “Chesapeake” for battle, and the British officer returned to the ship only five minutes later. Barron was hailed. Trying to obtain more time for his crew, Barron replied that he did not understand. The “Leopard” then fired two shots across the “Chesapeake’s” bow, followed by whole broadside at nearly point blank range. The “Leopard then poured two more broadsides into the “Chesapeake,” while it was still unready to respond. Commodore Barron then ordered the flag to be struck. Several British officers then came aboard and seized the three Americans deserters from the Melampus. They also found a true British deserter, named Jenkin Ratford, who was serving under an assumed name. Ratford was later hung.

The attack on the “Chesapeake” stirred America into a war fervor. If anyone but Jefferson had been President, this incident would probably have been enough to begin a war.

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Selma ~ called Bloody Sunday :Black History ~ American History

03/05/2025 Nativegrl77

First March from Selma

When You Pray, Move Your Feet.

— African Proverb.

Charles White(?), photographer, Selma, Alabama, March 1965.

photo courtesy of Representative John Lewis

John Lewis (on right in trench coat) and Hosea Williams (on the left) lead marchers across the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

On Sunday March 1965, about six hundred people began a fifty-four mile march from Selma, Alabama to the state capitol in Montgomery. They were demonstrating for African American voting rights and to commemorate the death of Jimmie Lee Jackson, shot three weeks earlier by an state trooper while trying to protect his mother at a civil rights demonstration. On the outskirts of Selma, after they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the marchers, in plain sight of photographers and journalists, were brutally assaulted by heavily armed state troopers and deputies.

One hundred years after the Civil War, in many parts of the nation, the 15th Amendment had been nullified by discriminatory laws, ordinances, intimidation, violence, and fear which kept a majority of African Americans from the polls. The situation was particularly egregious in the city of Selma, in Dallas County, Alabama, where African Americans made up more than half the population yet comprised only about 2 percent of the registered voters. As far back as 1896, when the U.S. House of Representatives adjudicated the contested results of a congressional election held in Dallas County, it was stated on the floor of Congress:

…I need only appeal to the memory of members who have served in this House for years and who have witnessed the contests that time and time again have come up from the black belt of Alabama—since 1880 there has not been an honest election in the county of Dallas…

Hon. W. H. Moody, of Massachusetts

Contested Election Case, Aldrich vs. Robbins, Fourth District, Alabama: Speeches of Hon. W.H. Moody, of Massachusetts [et al.] in the House of Representatives, 3 (2239),

March 12 and 13, 1896.

From Slavery to Freedom, 1824-1909

However, by March 1965, the Dallas County Voters League, the Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC), and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) were all working for voting rights in Alabama. John Lewis headed SNCC’s voter registration effort and, in March , he and fellow activist Hosea Williams led the group of silent marchers from the Brown Chapel AME Church to the foot of the Pettus bridge and into the event soon known as “Bloody Sunday.”

Alabama Police Attack Selma-to-Montgomery Marchers,

Federal Bureau of Investigation photograph

Selma, Alabama, March 7, 1965. — http://www.nps.gov/history/nr/travel/civilrights/al4.htm

“We Shall Overcome”: Historic Places of the Civil Rights Movement — http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/travel/civilrights/index.htm

When ABC television interrupted a Nazi war crimes documentary, Judgement in Nuremberg, to show footage of violence in Selma a powerful metaphor was presented to the nation. Within forty-eight hours, demonstrations in support of the marchers were held in eighty cities and thousands of religious and lay leaders, including Dr. Martin Luther King, flew to Selma. On March 9, Dr. King led a group again to the Pettus Bridge where they knelt, prayed, and, to the consternation of some, returned to Brown Chapel. That night a Northern minister, who was in Selma to march, was killed by white vigilantes.

Outraged citizens continued to inundate the White House and the Congress with letters and phone calls. On March 9, for example, Jackie Robinson, the baseball hero, sent a telegram to the President:

“IMPORTANT YOU TAKE IMMEDIATE ACTION IN ALABAMA ONE MORE DAY OF SAVAGE TREATMENT BY LEGALIZED HATCHET MEN COULD LEAD TO OPEN WARFARE BY AROUSED NEGROES AMERICA CANNOT AFFORD THIS IN 1965”

In Montgomery, Federal Judge Frank Johnson, Jr. temporarily restrained all parties in order to review the case. And, President Lyndon Johnson addressed the American people before a televised Joint Session of Congress, saying, “There is no issue of States rights or national rights. There is only the struggle for human rights…We have already waited a hundred years and more, and the time for waiting is gone…”

Rev. Ralph Abernathy walking with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as They Lead Civil Rights Marchers out of Camp to Resume Their March

United Press International — http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/94505571/

Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, March 21-25, 1965.

New York World-Telegram & Sun Collection,

Prints & Photographs Division — http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/

Allowing CBS footage of “Bloody Sunday” as evidence in court, Judge Johnson ruled on March 17, that the demonstrators be permitted to march. Under protection of a federalized National Guard, voting rights advocates left Selma on March 21 and stood 25,000 strong on March 25 before the state capitol in Montgomery. As a direct consequence of these events, the U.S. Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, guaranteeing every American twenty-one and over the right to register to vote. During the next four years the number of U.S. blacks eligible to vote rose from 23 to 61 percent.

John Lewis went on to serve as Director of the Voter Education Project, a program that eventually added nearly four million minorities to the voter rolls. To mark the thirty-fifth anniversary of “Bloody Sunday,” on March 7, 2000, Lewis, a U.S. Congressman from Atlanta’s 5th District, and Hosea Williams crossed the Pettus Bridge accompanied by President William Clinton, Coretta Scott King, and others. Asked to contrast this experience with that of 1965 the Congressman responded, “This time when I looked there were women’s faces and there were black faces among the troopers. And this time when we faced them, they saluted.”

•American Treasures is an exhibition of special items in the Library of Congress collections. The exhibition is divided into four sections: Top Treasures, Memory, Imagination, and Reason. The latter includes images taken about 1963 by Danny Lyon, staff photographer for SNCC, a key organizing body during the Civil Rights Movement.

•Search on the term Selma, Alabama in the black and white photos of the Farm Services Administration collection, FSA/OWI Photographs, 1935-1945 to see images of the city taken during the 1930s by the photographer Walker Evans. Search on Alabama to see images taken by the FSA photographers Dorothea Lange, Arthur Rothstein, Marion Post Wolcott, and Carl Mydans.

•The Great Migration made northerners more aware of disenfranchisement in the Deep South and newspapers like The Gazette and The Advocate fostered awareness within the black community. Search on the term vote in African-American Experience in Ohio, 1850-1920 to view about 100 items that address the issue. See, for example, the 1887 article “Negro Voting Power” and the 1888 article “First Colored Voter.” The poet Paul Lawrence Dunbar mentions Alabama disenfranchisement in his article “Paul Dunbar’s Protest.”

•Music drawn from a tradition of Southern spirituals helped sustain the Civil Rights Movement. Search on the term spiritual in the John Lomax and Ruby Terrel Lomax collection Southern Mosaic to hear some of the tunes which comprise that tradition. Listen, for example, to versions of “This Little Light of Mine,” “Long Way to Travel,” and “Great Day” as they were rendered in the South back in 1939.

•Images of 20th Century African American Activists: A Select List presents frequently requested images from the Prints & Photographs Division of the Library. Except where otherwise noted in the “Reproduction Number” line, images are considered to be in the public domain. The selection includes images of Martin Luther King, John Lewis, and Ralph Abernathy.

•Search the Today in History Archive on the term states rights to learn more about an issue which lay at the heart of the American system. Ironically, on March 7, 1850, (exactly 115 years before “Bloody Sunday”) Daniel Webster gave his famous “Seventh of March speech” in favor of the Compromise of 1850, which, while it postponed the Civil War, strengthened states’ rights at the cost of African-American freedom. Search on the term Alabama to learn more about events in the state, such as the arrest of Rosa Parks.

•With the exception of Concord Bridge, where the American Revolution began, no bridge in America marks an event as historically momentous as that marked by the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Nevertheless, search across the Photos and Prints section of American Memory on the term bridge to see a wide array of other bridges. See, for example, Burnside’s Bridge (fought over during the Battle of Antietam), a Covered Bridge in Vermont, and the Locust St. Bridge in Des Moines, Iowa. Also search the Today in History Archive on the term bridge to read features on the Brooklyn Bridge, Williamsburg Bridge, and Golden Gate Bridge.

Daniel Webster

I wish to speak today; not as a Mass[achusetts] man – nor a Northern man – but as an American, & a member of the Senate of the U[nited] S[tate]s.

Daniel Webster’s notes for his speech to the United States Senate favoring the Compromise of 1850, March 7, 1850.

Words and Deeds in American History: Selected Documents Celebrating the Manuscript Division’s First 100 Years

Daniel Webster

produced by Mathew Brady’s studio, circa 1851-1860.

America’s First Look into the Camera: Daguerrotype Portraits and Views, 1839-1864

The acquisition of territory following the U.S. victory in the Mexican War revived concerns about the balance of free and slave states in the Union. On March 7, 1850, Senator Daniel Webster delivered his famous “Seventh of March” speech urging sectional compromise on the issue of slavery. Advising abolition-minded Northerners to forgo antislavery measures, he simultaneously cautioned Southerners that disunion inevitably would lead to war.

Following the lead of senators Henry Clay and Stephen Douglas, Webster endorsed Clay’s plan to assure sectional equilibrium in Congress. Passed after eight months of congressional wrangling, the legislation admitted California to the Union as a free state, permitted the question of slavery in Utah and New Mexico territories to be decided by popular sovereignty, settled Texas border disputes, and abolished slave trading in the District of Columbia while strengthening the Fugitive Slave Act.

The legislative package known as the Compromise of 1850 postponed the Civil War by a decade. However, like the 1820 Missouri Compromise, the Compromise of 1850 failed to resolve the question of slavery in a meaningful way. Over the course of the 1850s, the inadequacies of both measures were made painfully clear. “Popular sovereignty” undermined the Missouri compromise by suggesting the earlier division of the country along the thirty-sixth parallel into free states and slave states no longer applied. Indeed, the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 permitted slavery. The resulting bloodshed in Kansas, like later incidents at Harper’s Ferry, presaged the violent conflict of the Civil War.

Henry Clay

produced by Mathew Brady’s studio, circa 1850-1852.

America’s First Look into the Camera: Daguerrotype Portraits and Views, 1839-1864

Incidents of the War. A Harvest of Death, Gettysburg, July 1863.

Timothy H. O’Sullivan, photographer.

Selected Civil War Photographs

•Words and Deeds in American History: Selected Documents Celebrating the Manuscript Division’s First 100 Years , an online display of approximately ninety representative documents preserved by the Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress, includes features on John C. Calhoun’s speech to the United States Senate against the Compromise of 1850 and Henry Clay’s appointment as secretary of state on March 7, 1825.

•Read the Documentary History of Slavery in the United States by John Larkin Dorsey. A contemporary of Webster and Clay, Dorsey reviews slavery in the U.S. from 1774 and the Continental Congress to 1850 with special attention to the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 and the probable dissolution of the Union. Search African American Perspectives: Pamphlets from the Daniel A. P. Murray Collection, 1818-1907 on slavery to access this document and many more.

•For more information about the movement to abolish slavery, visit the Abolition section of African American Odyssey, and the Abolition section of The African-American Mosaic as well. Also, read the Today in History features on Abolition in the District of Columbia , and on the abolitionists Lucretia Coffin Mott, and Elijah Parish Lovejoy.

•Browse The Frederick Douglass Papers. Many remarkable items are included in the papers of this nineteenth-century African-American abolitionist who escaped from slavery and then risked his own freedom by becoming an outspoken antislavery lecturer, writer, and publisher. The papers are divided into a series of nine sets. Set nine, for example, contains a booklet entitled Two Speeches by Frederick Douglass (on West Indian Emancipation and the Dred Scott Decision).

•A search on Daniel Webster in American Memory collections yields more than 2,000 items—including correspondence, speeches, images of statues, and even sheet music.

* Developed by the U.S. Department of Interior, National Park Service, U.S. Department of Transportation, The Federal Highway Administration, and the National Conference of State Historic Preservation Officers.

Black History Month

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Constitution

Image 03/04/2025 Nativegrl77

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History… March 4

03/04/2025 Nativegrl77

1634 – Samuel Cole opened the first tavern in Boston, MA.

1681 – England’s King Charles II granted a charter to William Penn for an area that later became the state of Pennsylvania.

1766 – The British Parliament repealed the Stamp Act, which had caused bitter and violent opposition in the U.S. colonies.

1778 – The Continental Congress voted to ratify the Treaty of Amity and Commerce and the Treaty of Alliance. The two treaties were the first entered into by the U.S. government.

1789 – The first Congress of the United States met in New York and declared that the U.S. Constitution was in effect.

1791 – Vermont was admitted as the 14th U.S. state. It was the first addition to the original 13 American colonies.

1794 – The 11th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was passed by the U.S. Congress. The Amendment limited the jurisdiction of the federal courts to automatically hear cases brought against a state by the citizens of another state. Later interpretations expanded this to include citizens of the state being sued, as well.

1813 – The Russians fighting against Napoleon reached Berlin. The French garrison evacuated the city without a fight.

1826 – The first railroad in the U.S. was chartered. It was the Granite Railway in Quincy, MA.

1837 – The state of Illinois granted a city charter to Chicago.

1861 – The Confederate States of America adopted the “Stars and Bars” flag.

1877 – Emile Berliner invented the microphone.

1880 – Halftone engraving was used for the first time when the “Daily Graphic” was published in New York City.

1881 – Eliza Ballou Garfield became the first mother of a U.S. President to live in the executive mansion.

1902 – The American Automobile Association was founded in Chicago.

1904 – In Korea, Russian troops retreated toward the Manchurian border as 100,000 Japanese troops advanced.

1908 – The New York board of education banned the act of whipping students in school.

1908 – France notified signatories of Algeciras that it would send troops to Chaouia, Morocco.

1914 – Dr. Gustave Le Fillatre successfully separated three-month-old Siamese twins. One of the twins died four days later.

1917 – Jeanette Rankin of Montana took her seat as the first woman elected to the House of Representatives.

1925 – Calvin Coolidge took the oath of office in Washington, DC. The presidential inauguration was broadcast on radio for the first time.

1930 – Emma Fahning became the first woman bowler to bowl a perfect game in competition run by the Women’s International Bowling Congress in Buffalo, NY.

1933 – U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt gave his inauguration speech in which he said “We have nothing to fear, but fear itself.”

1933 – Labor Secretary Frances Perkins became the first woman to serve in a Presidential administrative cabinet.

1942 – “Junior Miss” starring Shirley Temple aired on CBS radio for the first time.

1942 – The Stage Door Canteen opened on West 44th Street in New York City.

1947 – France and Britain signed an alliance treaty.

1950 – Walt Disney’s “Cinderella” was released across the U.S.
Disney movies, music and books

1952 – U.S. President Harry Truman dedicated the “Courier,” the first seagoing radio broadcasting station.

1952 – Ronald Reagan and Nancy Davis were married.

1954 – In Boston, Peter Bent Brigham Hospital reported the first successful kidney transplant.

1974 – “People” magazine was available for the first time.

1975 – Queen Elizabeth knighted Charlie Chaplin.

1986 – “Today” debuted in London as England’s newest, national, daily newspaper.