UWEC CERCA 2026

In 1857 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Dred Scott v Sandford, that Dred and Harriet Scott were not eligible to sue for their freedom because they were not citizens. In our modern retelling of this case the focus is overwhelmingly on the role that the Supreme Court had in spurring on the Civil War and/or the overreach of the federal government in attempting to regulate state property rights. This narrative obfuscates the way that Dred Scott v Sandford reinforced the idea that Black folks were not human and subject to dehumanization in the United States. By conducting an institutional ethnography of the physical locations that discuss the impact of Dred and Harriet Scott in the past and present in the Twin Cities this research argues that these locations are haunted with the memory of slavery and allow people in the present day to contend with the ghosts of the past and their role in the present.