Things do change.
With continued action, strong resistance and engagement.
Not soon enough, not when they could.
As the terrible Dred Scott Supreme Court decision, in 1857, was eventually ignored and then overturned both by the courts and by the outcome of the Civil War. The court ruled that Dred Scott was not a free man, and was still “owned” by the man who had brought him to a free state that did not allow slavery.
Dred Scott did, in fact, get his freedom, but not through the courts. After he and his wife were later bought by the Blow family (who had sold Scott to Emerson in the first place), they were freed in 1857. Scott died of tuberculosis in St. Louis the following year. Harriet Scott lived until June 1876, long enough to see the Civil War and the Thirteenth Amendment (1865) abolish slavery in the United States.