Reconciliation of the Past

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A very captivating event has happened recently in Baltimore, and I only feel it is more than necessary that I share it on my blog. I have not made a post on the landmark Dred Scott case, which resulted in a 160-year-old Supreme Court ruling that slaves were considered property and that no state could identify itself to be of free ground. The author of the court's decision, U.S Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, long has been honored with statues in his memory. Not anymore in Frederick, Maryland. Taney no longer stands to greet those who enter Frederick's City Hall, which once served as a courthouse for those seeking justice. Taney's statue was hauled away recently in the back of a pickup truck for relocation at a nearby cemetery. “To me, this was an embarrassment," said Frederick Alderman Donna Kuzemchak, who has been working to remove the statue since she was elected in 1997. And, in an even more powerful development, the great-great-great-nephew of the judge, Charles Taney, along with other descendants, recently apologized to the descendants of Dred Scott in front of another statue of Roger Taney on the grounds of the Maryland capitol in Annapolis. With their work toward reconciliation, Taney's ancestors and the citizens of a small Maryland town are showing the rest of those in the world that a simple apology and acts of consideration are positive steps toward moving closer to racial equality in America.