Following a spiritual prompting to research her 2nd great-grandfather, Jackson embarked on a journey of researching, commemorating and making peace with her family history

Lynne M. Jackson — a great-great-granddaughter of Dred and Harriet Scott, two Black slaves at the center of a landmark 1857 United States Supreme Court decision — took the stage at RootsTech on Friday, March 1, to tell her story of researching, commemorating and making peace with her family history.

Jackson said that in 1995, she heard her Heavenly Father tell her that she should study Dred Scott. As she embarked on her research, she began to discover for herself the significance of her ancestors’ experiences.

Dred and Harriet Scott fought an 11-year court battle to sue for their freedom, until Chief Justice Roger Taney in 1857 declared that they, as Black people, had no rights under the United States Constitution. The decision was a major catalyst for the U.S. Civil War, after which slavery was abolished.