Updating Public Monuments

Lynne M. Jackson, great-great-granddaughter of Dred and Harriet Scott, and Missouri Historical Society (MHS) President Dr. Jody Sowell, will lead a program about updating public monuments. Recent efforts of the Dred Scott Heritage Foundation, which Jackson founded and heads, resulted in a $65,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation Monuments Project to construct The Dred Scott Memorial Monument at Calvary Cemetery. Sowell, who has been with the MHS for 17 years, is an advocate of positioning MHS and its Missouri History Museum in St. Louis as a place where visitors can learn and wrestle with difficult history. He led the project to create interpretive labels for the museum's Thomas Jefferson statue. In April 2022, the three interpretive labels that examine contradictions between Jefferson's words about freedom and his practices concerning slaves were installed.