ColorLines blogger Akiba Solomon writes that a radical national movement called Personhood Mississippi is using Dred Scott's fight for freedom to convince voters to outlaw abortion.
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Now a cell of this national movement called Personhood Mississippi is using the infamous Dred Scott decision of 1857 to convince Mississippi voters to outlaw abortion in the state via a November 9th ballot initiative called Amendment 26.
As we all (hopefully) know, Dred Scott was an enslaved African-American who sued his so-called master for his freedom. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled that Scott and every other black person in this country had no right to sue in federal court because his blackness made him a non-citizen.
The Dred Scott decision is one of the purest examples of structural racism in U.S. history: A person of color is "owned" by a white person. That person tries to use the high court to get free. The high court says, "You're black and therefore not a citizen. Kick rocks." Case closed until the post-Civil War 14th Amendment establishes birthright citizenship.
Read Akiba Solomon's entire blog entry at ColorLines.
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