Civil Rights

Duration:

4 minutes, 32 seconds

Dred and Harriet Scott, enslaved African Americans, played a major role in civil rights history, starting in 1846. This short video re-enacts a hypothetical conversation in which the couple discusses the risks to their family if they sue their enslaver for their freedom at the Old Courthouse... and those they face if they don't.

 

Duration:

4 minutes, 11 seconds

Caroline Williams was a free African American living in post-Civil War St. Louis in 1867 who was the center of a landmark civil rights case. When she was thrown from a streetcar with her small child after trying to sit inside, she sought justice through the courts. This re-enactment of a conversation that Caroline might have had with her husband Neptune on the night of the incident dramatizes the courage necessary to challenge the status quo in former slave states.