As Justice Thomas noted today, the execrable Dred Scott decision of 1857 contained a passage in which Justice Taney suggested in horror that if freed slaves were able to become citizens
and entitled to the privileges and immunities of citizens, it would exempt them from the operation of the special laws and from the police regulations which they considered to be necessary for their own safety. It would give to persons of the negro race, who were recognised as citizens in any one State of the Union, the right to enter every other State whenever they pleased, singly or in companies, without pass or passport, and without obstruction, to sojourn there as long as they pleased, to go where they pleased at every hour of the day or night without molestation, unless they committed some violation of law for which a white man would be punished; and it would give them the full liberty of speech in public and in private upon all subjects upon which its own citizens might speak; to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went.
After the Civil War, the Republican Party tried to make this so via the Freedmen’s Bureau Act, the 1866 Civil Rights Act, and the 14th Amendment. Ultimately, that project failed — or, rather, was crushed — along with Reconstruction as a whole.
Today, 165 years after Taney wrote his ugly words, a member of the same Supreme Court — a descendant of slaves who grew up under segregation — said, in effect, “you’re damn straight we can.” Remarkable.