MINNESOTA HISTORY MAGAZINE — Since its establishment as a territory in 1849, Minnesota has outlawed the enslavement of African Americans, with one exception: a 14-month period between the US Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision in March 1857, which legalized slavery in all territories, and Minnesota’s entry into the Union as a free state in May 1858. Scholarship about instances of slavery in the state has focused on a few individual enslaved people. Telling the stories of Dred and Harriet Scott and Joseph Godfrey, to use just a few examples, is important to Minnesota’s history and humanizes their experiences.
Read more: http://collections.mnhs.org/MNHistoryMagazine/articles/65/v65i07p264-274.pdf
(Our Christopher P. Lehman details slaveholder investment in Territorial Minnesota in the new issue of Minnesota History Magazine.
Lehman is a social historian, author and professor in the Department of Ethnic and Women’s Studies.)
