Featuring: Larry Kenneth Alexander
Transcript:
Slavery was an organized criminal enterprise that exploited countless kidnapped Africans and enslaved Black people born in the American colonies. It betrayed the English rule of law, as colonial leaders ignored colonial charters, violated English law, and misused their positions to oppress and enrich themselves. Despite being owed the rights of British subjects, Black men, women, and children were denied justice and liberty, victims of racial tyranny and colonial government corruption. The story of slavery in America is a profound indictment of America’s founding generation, who benefited and protected the unlawful practice.
Slavery in the kingdom was not authorized by English law, and colonial legislatures did not have the authority to pass colonial slave codes or laws. Colonial assemblies like Virginia’s House of Burgesses did not have the legislative authority to enact any colonial statute or law without the approval of the upper house, the British Imperial government. Further, the hereditary slave law, partus sequitur ventrem, enacted first by Virginia’s House of Burgesses in 1662, decreed that children born to enslaved women would inherit the status of their mothers and be bound to a lifetime of enslavement from birth. This law lacked proper authorization from the British Imperial government. It was extralegal, and due to widespread corruption, it entrenched racial and gender discrimination throughout the 13 American colonies.
Under English law, a father was duty-bound to care for his child, irrespective of race. But this extralegal law offered a loophole, enabling white men to exploit enslaved women without consequence, leaving countless children bereft of the rights they deserved by birth. It absolved white men of the moral and legal obligation to acknowledge or provide for their mixed-race children. Further, this extralegal law invented race as a construct, claiming that slave status was a natural inheritance passed through generations by blood. This was a deliberate fabrication, a legal and social fiction designed to justify exploitation and solidify a racial caste system. They cloaked their corrupt acts in the veneer of legitimacy, claiming their laws were aligned with English principles. But this claim was a lie as egregious as the law itself.
English common law recognized partus sequitur patrem, that a child’s status followed that of the father. Under this principle, thousands of children born in the colonies were rightfully free, as their fathers were often free men. Yet the colonial elites ignored this, subverting English law to protect their power and economic interests. What emerged from this corruption was an unlawful institution caused by racial tyranny. However, a bright spot in this history is that these colonial slave codes and Negro laws were void ab initio because colonial assemblies did not have the legislative authority to enact a valid slave law. This nullified all colonial slave codes, preventing slavery from ever being a lawful practice.
Moreover, Parliament passed the American Colonies Act of 1766, which abolished colonial slave codes since they denied and questioned Parliament’s supreme legislative authority in the kingdom. Slave codes were also declared unconstitutional in the Somerset decision of 1772. Lastly, the Founding Fathers, in the Declaration of Independence, admitted in the grievance section of this historic document that King George III abolished their most valuable laws and fundamentally altered their form of government.
Let us be resolute in this mission to honor America’s true history and to uphold the principle that all are entitled to freedom, justice, and equality. Please share and visit our website at Wells Center on American Exceptionalism and look for future videos in this series.