Scott Tyler (born 1965), known professionally as Dread Scott, is an American artist whose works, often participatory in nature, focus on the experience of African Americans in the contemporary United States. His first major work, What Is the Proper Way to Display a U.S. Flag (1989), was at the center of a controversy regarding whether his piece resulted in desecration of the American flag. Scott would later be one of the defendants in United States v. Eichman, a Supreme Court case in which it was eventually decided that federal laws banning flag desecration were unconstitutional. Early life and Art Institute of Chicago Scott was raised in Hyde Park, Chicago, the only son of his father, a photographer, and mother, who was "largely a housewife" but became a travel agent when Scott's father became ill and unable to work. For twelve years, Scott attended the upper-class Latin School, where other students often directed racial slurs towards him. Scott attended college at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He later moved to New York City to begin his artistic career. His adopted name, "Dread", had multiple meanings: combined with his first name it evoked Dred Scott, a black slave who unsuccessfully sued for his freedom during the 1850s, after having been held in a free state; was an allusion to the dreadlocks of Rastafarians; and reflected a desire to cause "dread" among others. In 1989, while attending the Art Institute, Scott exhibited What Is the Proper Way to Display a U.S. Flag, a participatory work that invited viewers to write comments in a ledger, mounted on a podium that stood at one end of an American flag spread on the floor. The work consisted of a collage, which featured flag-covered coffins and South Korean students burning the American flag, and an American flag placed on the floor beneath the aforementioned ledger. Participants were seemingly directed to step on the flag to leave messages, though it was possible to avoid touching the flag by approaching the ledger from the side. The exhibit generated intense controversy: several major politicians, including George H. W. Bush, condemned the exhibit. As a result of Scott's exhibit and the unrelated decision in Texas v. Johnson, the United States Congress decided to make flag desecration illegal in 1989 with the Flag Protection Act. Scott was one of four people arrested for burning flags on the steps of