Dred Scott documentary

Emily Hall wins special History Day award

Thirteen-year-old Emily Hall decided to do her Missouri History Day project on former slave Dred Scott's court fight for freedom. She said, "I didn't know much about him and I didn't even know about the special competition category for him."

She does now. The 7th grader from Bernard Middle School won the St. Louis Area Archivists Dred Scott Prize: Junior Division in last month's regional competition.

One part of her Missouri History Day's prize was an introduction to Lynn Jackson, Scott's great, great granddaughter. This is the 150th anniversary of the court suit denying Scott his bid for freedom from slavery.

Another part of Emily's prize was a $150 check from the St. Louis Archivists group.

Emily also got an offer for help to make her Dred Scott documentary more complete.

She said Michael Everman of the Association of St. Louis Area Archivists (ASLAA) "offered me access to other Dred Scott documents if I wanted to make my film better."

Emily said she will take him up on his offer. She wanted to do additional work because Bernard social science teacher Pat Clements wanted her to show the film to her students.

"I'll show it when they get to Dred Scott in class in a few weeks," Emily said.

She added, "Besides, I want to fix the sound on the film. The sound level isn't even. It fluctuated part way through."

Emily said she made the 7-minute Dred Scott documentary film all by herself.

She did all the research, picture taking and voice-over by herself. But, she did have some previous filmmaking experience.

"When I was in 6th grade, I was on a team that entered the Show Me a Movie competition," she said. That's an annual movie competition sponsored by the Cooperative School Districts organization.

She said that movie featured "live-action" with kids not only doing the filming but also acting in the movie. She said that movie was about King Midas. That mythical king could change different substances into precious metals, such as gold and silver.

The kids depicted the change by wrapping aluminum foil around the object. "We even wrapped the foil around an arm to show it had been turned into silver," she said.

For her Dred Scott film, she didn't have "live action." She said, "Mostly, I took still pictures of places and things and put them together on videotape and did a voice-over."

Asked about background music, Emily said, "I didn't have time for that."

She said by picking Dred Scott as a subject she could show present-day historic sites.

One of those places was the Old Courthouse in downtown St. Louis. That's the scene of the original Dred Scott legal battles. She said she had an hour-long interview with Robert Moore, the Old Courthouse historian.

"He knew a lot of neat stuff about Dred Scott," Emily said.

She got books from both her school library and the Cliff Cave branch of the St. Louis County Library.

She also admitted, "Google is my friend." She was referring to the online search engine that can locate all sorts of sources of historical information.

Asked about the most significant research fact she discovered, Emily said, "The U.S. Supreme Court's reversal of a lower court decision contributed to the Civil War."

But, she said the historic fact that interested her most from a personal standpoint was something she didn't put in her documentary. She said, while at the Old Courthouse, she ran into an older woman who was making a longer documentary about Scott.

"She told me that Scott's owner had sold off Scott's kids to try to pressure him to drop his court suit," Emily said.

(If you'd like to get the names of all the Region V winners in the National History Day competition, go to www.umsl.edu/~history. Then, click on the National History Day icon. At the bottom of that page, click on senior awards or junior awards.)

She made the Dred Scott documentary as part of Bernard Middle School's STRETCH program. That's an accelerated branch of social studies. Her teacher is Susan Jesse.

Emily said she's already looking forward to doing another History Day documentary when she's an 8th grader.

But, she said she hopes to be on a documentary team rather than doing a film solo.

She said, "Teamwork is better because you can split up the work more."