Earlier today, a dedication ceremony was held for a new Memorial Monument in Calvary Cemetery, St. Louis, Missouri, at the gravesite of Dred Scott. Scott was an enslaved man who is best known for his role as the plaintiff in Scott v. Sanford, an 1857 Supreme Court case deciding that African Americans were not citizens and did not have standing to sue in federal court. Speaking at the event was Dr. Dawn Eden Goldstein, author of a biography of Father Ed Dowling, a St. Louis Jesuit priest who helped campaign for Scott’s first tombstone in the 1950s. The following is the text of her remarks. —ML
Dr. Goldstein with Nate Tinner Williams, founder and editor of Black Catholic Messenger, at the dedication of the new Dred Scott memorial.
This is a day of joy—joy in heaven and joy on earth. I am grateful to be here to tell you about someone I am sure is rejoicing in heaven. Father Ed Dowling longed for this day, and his spirit is with us as we honor Dred Scott.
Father Dowling was born in Baden, just a mile and a half from here. His Baden roots run so deep that there is a large Dowling family monument right here at Calvary. Father Dowling’s grandparents, his parents, his siblings—all of them are buried here.
Today Father Dowling is best known for the spiritual support he gave Bill Wilson, the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous. But Father Dowling also worked to promote democracy and civil rights. When he learned that, just steps away from the Dowling family monument, Dred Scott was buried in an unmarked grave, he was greatly disturbed.
At that time, in 1956, Father Dowling, along with his sister Anna, had recently founded the Old Baden Historical Society. The two of them decided to have the society sponsor a fund-raising campaign to have a marker placed on Dred Scott’s grave.
The gravesite was owned by the descendants of Taylor Blow, who freed Dred Scott. So Father Dowling contacted Taylor Blow’s grandson, Thomas Blow, who gave him permission to raise funds for the marker. Father Dowling then reached out to Dred Scott’s great-grandson, John A. Madison, Jr.—the father of Lynne Jackson—to ensure that the marker would meet the approval of Dred Scott’s descendants.
After Father Dowling launched the fund-raising campaign, a granddaughter of Taylor Blow, Mrs. Charles Harrison, asserted her right to approve the marker. Mrs. Harrison believed that cemeteries should be places of peaceful and undisturbed beauty. For that reason, she told Father Dowling that she wanted “the smallest and most modest marker possible.”
Dred Scott’s original tombstone
So Father Dowling gave an interview to the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, seeking to raise funds for a modest gravestone. But he knew that Dred Scott deserved more. He told the reporter that the object in marking Scott’s grave was so that, “if someone someday wants to put up a better monument, it will at least be known where Dred Scott lies.”
Ultimately Mrs. Harrison decided to finance the marker herself. And today we see it replaced by a better monument, just as Father Dowling envisioned.
When Father Dowling died in 1960, he was buried at a Jesuit property, St. Stanislaus Seminary in Florissant. Later on, the Jesuits sold that property, and those who were buried there were reinterred here at Calvary Cemetery. But when the Jesuit graves were moved from St. Stanislaus, it was decided that they would not have individual markers—only a wall listing all their names together. So now Dred Scott’s grave has the monument that Father Dowling wanted it to have, whereas Father Dowling’s own grave is effectively unmarked. Given how Father Dowling spent himself completely ministering to the poor in spirit, I know he would say that too is cause for joy.
Featured Image: Painting of Dred Scott by Louis Schultze, commissioned by “a group of Negro citizens” and presented to the Missouri Historical Society in 1882. The image was painted after the only known photograph of Scott. Public Domain.
Memorial image: Courtesy Dawn Eden Goldstein.
Tombstone image: “Dred Scott” (CC BY 2.0) by Bryan Sutter
Dawn Eden Goldstein, JCL, STD, is the author of several books, including Father Ed: The Story of Bill W.'s Spiritual Sponsor, The Thrill of the Chaste, and My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints. She has taught at seminaries in the United States, England, and India. Currently she is writing a biography of Father Louis J. Twomey, SJ. Visit her at The Dawn Patrol.
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