Focus (Forum & Focus)
Nov. 20, 2007
California Constitution Struck An Early Blow Against Injustices of Slavery
Forum Column - By Elaine Elinson - Years before the Civil War began, the Golden State gave one slave the freedom that Dred Scott could never acquire in the courtroom.
FORUM COLUMN
By Elaine Elinson
In 1857, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the infamous Dred Scott decision that slaves or descendants of slaves could not be U.S. citizens and that blacks "had no rights which the white man was bound to respect." That same year, an 18-year-old black man named Archy Lee made a very different kind of history in California.
Lee had traveled overland from ...
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