Page 23 - 1619 Project Curriculum

August 18, 2019

An 1872 portrait of African-Americans serving in Congress (from left): Hiram Revels, the first black man elected to

Turner; Robert C. De Large; Josiah T. Walls; Jefferson H. Long; Joseph H. Rainy; and R. Brown Elliot.
the Senate; Benjamin S.

story as 1776. That black Americans, our global reputation as a land of At the time, one-fifth of the pop- that enslaved people would never

as much as those men cast in alabas- liberty. As Jefferson composed his ulation within the 13 colonies strug- be treated as such. As the abolition-

ter in the nation’s capital, are this inspiring words, however, a teenage gled under a brutal system of slavery ist William Goodell wrote in 1853,

nation’s true ‘‘founding fathers.’’ boy who would enjoy none of those unlike anything that had existed in ‘‘If any thing founded on falsehood

And that no people has a greater rights and liberties waited nearby to the world before. Chattel slavery might be called a science, we might

claim to that flag than us. serve at his master’s beck and call. was not conditional but racial. It add the system of American slavery

His name was Robert Hemings, and was heritable and permanent, not to the list of the strict sciences.’’

In June 1776, Thomas Jefferson sat he was the half brother of Jefferson’s temporary, meaning generations Enslaved people could not legal-

at his portable writing desk in a wife, born to Martha Jefferson’s of black people were born into it ly marry. They were barred from

rented room in Philadelphia and father and a woman he owned. It and passed their enslaved status learning to read and restricted

penned these words: ‘‘We hold was common for white enslavers onto their children. Enslaved peo- from meeting privately in groups.

via the Library of Congress all men are created equal, that they in slavery. Jefferson had chosen beings but as property that could dren, who could be bought, sold and

They had no claim to their own chil-
these truths to be self-evident, that
were not recognized as human

ple

to keep their half-black children

be mortgaged, traded, bought, sold,
traded away

Creator with
are endowed by their
from them on auction
Hemings, from among about 130

blocks alongside furniture and cattle
enslaved people that worked on the
used as collateral, given as a gift and

certain unalienable Rights, that
labor camp he called Monti-
among these are Life, Liberty and

or behind storefronts that advertised

forced-

disposed of
violently. Jefferson’s fel-

people were human beings, but

courts did not honor kinship ties to
Currier & Ives, the pursuit of Happiness.’’ For the cello, to accompany him to Philadel- low white colonists knew that black ‘‘Negroes for Sale.’’ Enslavers and the

phia and ensure his every

comfort as
years, this fierce assertion

last 243

mothers, siblings, cousins. In most
they
of the fundamental and natural
he drafted the text making the case

created a network of laws and

rights of humankind to freedom
democratic republic based

courts, they had no legal standing.

customs, astounding for both their
for a new

precision and cruelty, that ensured
Enslavers could rape or murder their
on the individual rights of men.

and self-governance has defined

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