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Dread Scott, one of the artists featured in the 

 for the museum criticizing the actions of police in 

, and looking at the cultural ramifications of the fatal shooting of 

Scott says people are increasingly questioning the legitimacy of the police and other foundational values of American society.

Scott chose his stage name as a tribute to Dred Scott,  a slave who unsuccessfully sued for his freedom in 1857 after the man who owned him, an Army doctor, spent time in Illinois, a free state, and Wisconsin, a free territory. The U.S. Supreme Court declared the 1820 Missouri Compromise unconstitutional and ruled that slave owners had the right to take slaves into the western territories.

Scott says that ruling "pivoted on citizenship, but ideologically it hinged on whether those who governed America viewed Africans and African-Americans as human beings deserving of any rights." He says the sentiments in the Dred Scott decision shine a light on the government's behavior toward blacks even today.

For his part, Scott is asking people to participate in the 

Month of Resistance to Mass Incarceration, Police Terror, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation"

 called for by Carl Dix (founding member of the Revolutionary Communist Party), public intellectual Cornel West and the Stop Mass Incarceration Network.

Arts and Culture

State of the Arts Blog

Marianne Combs

Author

Dread Scott, one of the artists featured in the Walker Art Center‘s “Radical Presence” exhibition, has written an essay for the museum criticizing the actions of police in Ferguson, and looking at the cultural ramifications of the fatal shooting of Michael Brown. Scott says people are increasingly questioning the legitimacy of the police and other…

Walker Artist Dread Scott speaks out on Ferguson

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