Page 24 - 1619 Project Curriculum

The 1619 Project

A postcard showing the scene at the murder of Allen Brooks, an African-American laborer who was

accused of attempted rape. He was dragged through the streets around the Dallas County Courthouse

and lynched on March 3, 1910. Postcards of lynchings were not uncommon in the early 20th century.

property without legal consequence. colonists decided to declare their to ensure that slavery would con- Constitution, the framers careful-

Enslaved people could own nothing, independence from Britain was tinue. It is not incidental that 10 of ly constructed a document that

will nothing and inherit nothing. because they wanted to protect the this nation’s first 12 presidents were preserved and protected slavery

They were legally tortured, includ- institution of slavery. By 1776, Britain enslavers, and some might argue without ever using the word. In the

ing by those working for Jefferson had grown deeply conflicted over its that this nation was founded not as texts in which they were making the

himself. They could be worked to role in the barbaric institution that a democracy but as a slavocracy. case for freedom to the world, they

death, and often were, in order to had reshaped the Western Hemi- Jeff erson and the other founders did not want to explicitly enshrine

produce the highest profits for the sphere. In London, there were grow- were keenly aware of this hypoc- their hypocrisy, so they sought to

white people who owned them. ing calls to abolish the slave trade. risy. And so in Jefferson’s original hide it. The Constitution contains

Yet in making the argument This would have upended the econo- draft of the Declaration of Inde- 84 clauses. Six deal directly with the

against Britain’s tyranny, one of the my of the colonies, in both the North pendence, he tried to argue that it enslaved and their enslavement, as

colonists’ favorite rhetorical devic- and the South. The wealth and prom- wasn’t the colonists’ fault. Instead, the historian David Wald streicher

to

es was claim that they were the inence that allowed Jefferson, at just he blamed the king of England for has written, and five more hold
slaves — to Britain. For this duplic- 33, and the other founding fathers forcing the institution of slavery on implications for slavery. The Con-

ity, they faced burning criticism to believe they could successfully the unwilling colonists and called stitution protected the ‘‘property’’

both at home and abroad. As Sam- break off from one of the mightiest the trafficking in human beings a of those who enslaved black peo-

uel Johnson, an English writer and empires in the world came from the crime. Yet neither Jeff erson nor ple, prohibited the federal govern-

Tory opposed to American inde- dizzying profits generated by chat- most of the founders intended to ment from intervening to end the

pendence, quipped, ‘‘How is it that tel slavery. In other words, we may abolish slavery, and in the end, they importation of enslaved Africans for

we hear the loudest yelps for liberty never have revolted against Britain struck the passage. a term of 20 years, allowed Congress
among the drivers of Negroes?’’ if the founders had not understood There is no mention of slavery to mobilize the militia to put down

Conveniently left out of our that slavery empowered them to do in the final Declaration of Inde- insurrections by the enslaved and

founding mythology is the fact so; nor if they had not believed that pendence. Similarly, 11 years later, forced states that had outlawed

that one of the primary reasons the independence was required in order when it came time to draft the slavery to turn over enslaved people

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