Join the Field House Museum as we continue our online programming with a Speaker Series event on August 19 at 7 p.m. Dr. Kelly Kennington, author and associate professor at Auburn University, will be joining us to present on her book “In the Shadow of Dred Scott: St. Louis Freedom Suits and the Legal Culture of Slavery in Antebellum America.” Drawing on the case files of more than three hundred enslaved individuals who, like Dred Scott and his family, sued for freedom in the legal arena of St. Louis, she explores new perspectives on the legal culture of slavery and the negotiated processes involved in freedom suits.
About the Author: Dr. Kennington joined Auburn’s History Department in 2009 and began teaching at Auburn in the fall of 2010 after her year as the Law and Society Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Wisconsin’s Law School. At Auburn, she teaches courses in the History of the South to 1877, American Slavery, and American Legal History, in addition to survey courses in World History and United States History to 1877.
Making the Connection: In 1850, Roswell Field served as one of the key attorneys on the infamous Dred Scott v. Sandford case. Roswell brought the case to the United States Supreme Court where the final decision would have lasting repercussions leading to the Civil War. It is because of Roswell’s work on the case that the Field House Museum was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2007, one of only thirty-seven in Missouri.
