In St. Louis one evening last week, a tall, commanding-looking Negro in a dark suit and vest walked into the main rotunda of the city's Old Courthouse. For 30 minutes, he stood there and told TV viewers the story of the slave Sam Blow who picked up the nickname Great Scott-pronounced Dred Scott in Sam Blow's Gullah accent—whose suit was tried twice in that courthouse, in 1847 and in 1850.
It was a kind of lecture, really, with choral interludes by costumed singers, discussing the illiterate man whose petition for freedom was finally turned down by the U.S. Supreme Court. The lecturer was Marc Hannibal, formerly a professional basketball player with the razzle-dazzle Harlem Globetrotters. He had never before been on television, and that was the whole idea.
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