Equality, Slavery, and the Founding

Videos:

 Primary texts:

• Petition for freedom to the Massachusetts Council and the House of Representatives, January 13, 1777

• Rhode Island Act Authorizing the Manumission of Negros, Mulattoes, and Others and the Gradual Abolition of Slavery, 1784

• Thomas Jefferson:

• Letter to Benjamin Banneker, August 30, 1791

• Letter to Henri Gregoire, February 25, 1809

• Letter to Edward Coles, August 25, 1814

• Letter to John Holmes, April 22, 1820

• John Adams:

• Letter to Robert Evans, June 8, 1819

• Letter to George Churchman and Jacob Lindley, January 24, 1801

• George Washington, Letter to Robert Morris, April 12, 1786

• James Madison:

• Memorandum on an African Colony for Freed Slaves, ca. Oct. 20, 1789

• Letter to Robert J. Evans, June 15, 1819

• Letter to Robert Walsh, 27 November 1819

• Alexander Hamilton, Letter to John Jay, March 14, 1779

• James Wilson, Pennsylvania Ratifying Convention, Dec. 3-4, 1787

• John Jay to the President of the [English] Society for Promoting the Manumission of Slaves, June 1788

• Pennsylvania 1780 Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery

• Luther Martin, “Genuine Information,” 1788

• Frederick Douglass:

• “What Should Be Done With Emancipated Slaves,” Douglass’ Monthly, January 1862

• “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” July 5, 1852

• “Oration in Memory of Abraham Lincoln,” April 14, 1876

• Martin Luther King, Jr., “I Have a Dream,” August 28, 1963

• Thurgood Marshall, “Reflections on the Bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution,” 1987

Other recommended readings:

• Nikole Hannah-Jones, “Our democracy’s founding ideals were false when they were written. Black Americans have fought to make them true,” New York Times, August 14, 2019