ASLAH 2025: Something Old, Something New: The Criminal Enslavement of 500,000 Black Colonials and Afrofuturism in the 21st Century

In this lecture created for the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASLAH) conference in 2025, Larry Kenneth Alexander, Founder and President of the Ida B. Wells Center on American Exceptionalism and Restorative Justice, joined by Dr. Walter Greason of Macalester College, interrogates America’s long-standing narrative that the United States “inherited” slavery from Britain. Using forensic historical recovery, Alexander demonstrates that colonial slave laws and Negro codes had already been legislatively abolished by Parliament’s American Colonies Act of 1766 and judicially nullified in the Somerset decision of 1772. Yet in the wake of the Revolution, Congress denied due process to 500,000 Afro-English colonials, committing them to bondage in violation of both English constitutional law and international treaty obligations. This talk confronts the deliberate betrayal of the rule of law at America’s founding and explores how Afrofuturism in the 21st century can reclaim history’s suppressed truths to chart a path toward justice

Transcript:

 

Hello. I am Larry Kenneth Alexander, the Founder and President of the Wells Center on American Exceptionalism and Restorative Justice. 

I have the honor of presenting the second of my works at the 110th Annual Conference of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History on September 25, 2025. 

I am joined by Dr. Walter D. Greason, the Dewitt Wallace Professor of History at Macalester College in St. Paul, MN.

My first presentation was on September 24th, again with Dr. Greason.

Today, the title of my talk is “Something Old, Something New: the Criminal Enslavement of 500,000 Black Colonials and Afrofuturism in the 21st Century.”

We … at the Wells Center, a public policy institute using forensic principles and methodologies want to recover Black America’s history accurately. Forensic historical recovery is a specialized approach to revisiting and reinterpreting the past that borrows methods and standards from forensic investigation. And in doing so use our recovery of that history to set the direction of Afrofuturism.

The conventional story says: when Britain recognized U.S. independence, the new Republic inherited the American colonies’ enslaved population as lawful property. This interpretation has been repeated for centuries in textbooks, judicially used in cases like the Dred Scott controversy in 1857, the resulting Civil War and is a pulsating narrative in political and white supremacy rhetoric.

A forensic historical recovery approach asks: … is this narrative supported by law and evidence at the time? Such is the nature of my interrogation of America’s conventional story that these five hundred thousand British colonials were lawfully enslaved, exploited and dehumanized by the United States … and made the foundational labor force of this new Republic. We at Wells Center believe that the evidence, when tested under forensic scrutiny, compels a revision and correction. 

This slide provides a brief bio on the two of us.

Moving on…

A question I frequently encounter is why, at my age, am I trying to recover history.

The fact is that I am a descendant of American slavery. My grandmother’s father was born a slave in Tipton County, TN in 1862. The question I asked as a child, what made Poppa Pete a slave, was never addressed by my parents. 

So, over the years, I kept probing. Which has led me here today to exhort all of us to keep our history alive and keep moving forward to help this country rectify it’s wrongdoing and the continuing effects on the entire society, regardless of race.

The conventional claim, that the United States lawfully inherited its initial enslaved population of approximately 500,000 Black colonials after the American Revolution, from British rule is both ahistorical and misanthropic. 

The historical record demonstrates that the extralegal colonial American slave laws and Negro codes, —enacted by provincial assemblies, —had already been nullified by Parliament’s American Colonies Act (1766): which was supreme, superseding British imperial law, which occurred ten years before the Declaration of Independence. By operation of Anglo-American jurisprudence, black colonials should have been granted due process, and then liberty, as the liberty rights were personal, and restored to all enslaved Afro-English colonials and they were free subjects of the Crown by law. The question concerning their legal status, enslavement and exploitation became an international legal dispute. It surfaced immediately in the Revolution’s aftermath. Article IX of the Treaty of Paris (1783) served as the agreed mechanism for adjudicating disputes arising from peace. In May 1783, British General Guy Carleton invoked it, reporting to George Washington that “renewed hostilities” were occurring: Americans were kidnapping and re-enslaving Black colonials, —English subjects whom the imperial government recognized as free, yet Washington made the performative argument that his American citizens were merely reclaiming their chattel property based upon extralegal and abolished colonial American slave laws and Negro codes. General Carleton saw Washington’s stance as posturing since colonial American slavery was not a legally authorized practice and that the resolution of this treaty dispute favored the British, as the imperial government had abolished all their colonial slave laws in 1766 and in the Declaration of Independence’s grievance section … the Patriots did confirm that King George III had “abolished our most valuable laws,” which were the colonial American slave laws and Negro codes. 

Furthermore, Parliament had supreme legislative authority over the colonial American legislature and its legislative supremacy in the Kingdom had long been beyond dispute. Additionally, America’s Congress and each of the state legislatures had formally adopted Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence and English law, over Thomas Jefferson’s strident objections. 

This formal adoption of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence bound this nascent Republic to the Magna Carta (1215) and its core principle … that “no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law,” which is the bedrock of Anglo-American constitutionalism. 

Further, the Somerset decision of Lord Chief Justice Mansfield had declared in 1772 … slavery was not “allowed and approved by the law of this Kingdom,” which was controlling legal precedent. 

However, once the matter was referred to America’s Congress for resolution … the rule of law collapsed as they feared internal strife, chaos and the possibility of disunion of the states if it proceeded with this unpopular question, and it refused to address this international dispute regarding freedom for black colonials. By declining to address this dispute, the United States denied fundamental due process of law to 500,000 Afro-Englishmen. Moreover, by yielding to public and political concerns … and skipping this agreed to international process … the United States committed an irredeemable breach of Anglo-American jurisprudence by denying due process before sentencing … as it is well accepted, to deny due process is to deny the rule of law altogether. 

Before the outbreak of the American Revolution in April 1775, the question of whether a colonial legislature could create a property interest in a human being had already been settled by Parliament and England’s highest tribunal. 

It was adjudicated in England’s Court of King’s Bench. In Rex v. Stapylton (1771), Lord Chief Justice Mansfield made clear that race alone could never constitute proof of slave ownership:… “being black will not prove the property.” In that criminal proceeding, the white slaveholder advanced a slave ownership defense. …However, Lord Mansfield instructed the jury to presume liberty unless the alleged owner could establish a valid legal title, —a burden Stapylton could neither meet nor sustain. When the jury returned a guilty verdict, Mansfield affirmed it without hesitation: “I think you have done very right. I should have 

One year later, Mansfield delivered his landmark opinion in Somerset v. Stewart (K.B. 1772). There, he held that slavery could not be sustained absent positive law, and since no statute in England established such a condition, James Somerset, an alleged slave based upon colonial American slave laws could not be forced out of the realm as being a slave. Mansfield’s famous declaration—that slavery was “so odious, that nothing can be suffered to support it but positive law”— confirmed the extralegal character of hereditary bondage; … and went on to declare, slavery was not “allowed and approved by the law of the Kingdom.” Taken together, the Stapylton, and Somerset rulings established and forged a clear legal framework: in English law, freedom was the rule, slavery the anomaly, and only sustainable by explicit statute.

Thus, when the issue concerning a black colonial entitlement to liberty in accordance to provision VII in the Treaty of Paris reemerged after the Revolution—through Carleton’s referral under Article IX of the treaty—Congress knew the matter involved the inalienable right to liberty … the British had compelling facts and judicial rulings supporting its position that liberty was mandated for the 500,000 Black colonials. Yet Congress chose silence. Instead of extending fundamental due process of law to half a million free English subjects, it through its inaction … sanctioned their continued enslavement and became complicit in their systemic exploitation. 

This was not oversight. It was a deliberate repudiation of nascent Anglo-American law and a calculated betrayal of the rule of law itself. The introduction of Black slavery in the United States, in light of the Congress denying fundamental due process to these presumptive legally-free individuals prevents and forecloses the mere suggestion of lawful inheritance. It was an American creation, —a conscious rejection of established English jurisprudence, and the deliberate foundation of a republic committed to legal inequality.

No different than America’s interment of our Japanese countrymen in the wake of World War II, the process by which black colonials became the bedrock of America’s slave-based economy was constitutionally foul. Colonial assemblies lacked lawful authority to enact or codify hereditary bondage, as they were only granted legislative authority to operate within a bicameral imperial framework subject to parliamentary supremacy. The constitutional trajectory of England after the mid-seventeenth century confirms this limitation. Following the English Civil War and the execution of Charles the first, in 1649, the constitutional monarchy was reestablished, culminating in the English Bill of Rights (1689). This imperial statute codified the common-law principle that no Englishman was above—or beneath—the rule of law. 

It prohibited the suspension of laws without parliamentary consent, barred cruel and unusual punishments, and guaranteed subjects the right to petition and protection against arbitrary penalties. 

As an imperial statute, it bound colonial governance as much as domestic governance, affirming that all government was limited and constrained by law. 

Moreover, as courts and scholars often say: “due process is not merely a right among others… it is the condition that makes all rights meaningful”. 

The refusal of the newly-formed United States to honor this constitutional requirement—and its deliberate choice to deny due process, enslave, and exploit some 500,000 Afro-English subjects and their succeeding generations, —was not simply a political compromise. It was a profound breach of Anglo-American jurisprudence, a betrayal of constitutional tradition, and a violation of emerging international legal norms. 

This failure to grant due process and 250 years of obfuscation, deflection and concealment stands at the very core of America’s founding contradictions and this country’s present-day social, legal and wealth disparities issues. 

Parliamentary sovereignty, as a constitutional principle, was rooted in the Glorious Revolution settlement of 1689 and embodied in the English Bill of Rights. It was later refined by the British scholar, A.V. Dicey, in his seminal Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution, where he distilled the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty into two propositions: (1) “Parliament has the right to make or unmake any law whatsoever”; and (2) “No person or body has the right to override or set aside an Act of Parliament.” To underscore the breadth of Parliament’s authority, Dicey offered a dramatic hypothetical: 

“Parliament could, if it saw fit, pass a law ordering the execution of all blue-eyed babies.” 

Dicey’s point was not that such legislation was imaginable in practice, but instead … there’s no substantive limit which bounds Parliament’s legislative competence. The only real safeguard, he argued, was the political check of public opinion and democratic accountability. By this logic, acts of Parliament had the immediate force of law and were absolute during the colonial American period. The English Bill of Rights in 1689 announced that its habeas corpus protections extended to “all subjects” of the Crown, which necessarily included black colonials. As a matter of law, colonial American statutes that attempted to reduce colonial-born Blacks, Africans, and their descendants to perpetual bondage without trial or lawful judgment in the American colonies directly contravened the liberties and fundamental habeas rights codified in the Bill of Rights. Such colonial statutes were therefore per se repugnant to Parliament’s supreme authority and void. As subordinate legislatures within the kingdom, the colonial assemblies lacked any lawful power to derogate from imperial enactments. The Anglo-American constitutional vocabulary of “null and void” carried profound consequences for the status of liberty in the eighteenth century. Its decisive articulation came in the American Colonies Act of 1766 (Declaratory Act), where Parliament reaffirmed its legislative supremacy over the American colonies. 

Declaring that it “had, hath, and of right ought to have, full power and authority to make laws and statutes … to bind the colonies and people of America … in all cases whatsoever,” Parliament then specified that any colonial enactment “repugnant to the authority of Parliament … are hereby declared to be null and void to all intents and purposes whatsoever.” 

Colonial slave codes and Negro laws, which purported to reduce English subjects of African descent to hereditary bondage absent trial or lawful judgment, stood in direct conflict with the liberty and legal rights all Englishmen secured under the English Bill of Rights (1689). By parliamentary declaration, such colonial American enactments were void ab initio, extralegal usurpations, which were incapable of creating binding rights or obligations. The sweeping language in Parliament’s American Colonies Act effectively foreclosed any residual claim by colonial American legislatures to possess lawful autonomy to derogate from imperial guarantees or to violate their colonial charters. Still, legal nullity in theory did not automatically dissolve enslavement in practice. Individuals continued to be restrained until a court was asked to give the doctrine effect. 

That moment came in Somerset versus Stewart (1772). James Somerset, a colonial black man brought from Virginia to England, petitioned for habeas corpus after being detained for transport to Jamaica. Lord Mansfield, Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, famously ruled that slavery was “so odious, that nothing can be suffered to support it but positive law.” As no such law existed in England, Mansfield ordered Somerset discharged. This decision did not invent a right to freedom but recognized that the supposed property claim over Somerset had never been supported by law. In effect, Mansfield gave judicial teeth to Parliament’s earlier declaration: colonial American statutes repugnant to English liberties were “null and void.” Somerset’s discharge was a paradigmatic case of judicially ordered restitution in integrum, restoring him to the free legal status that had always been his. This judicial ruling in 1772 served as a precedent for subsequent litigation that enforced the constitutional nullity of colonial American slave laws and Negro codes enacted by Parliament in 1766, and it extended its effect beyond the individual litigant to others who were similarly situated in the American colonies. Moreover, the consequences were immediate and widespread throughout the Kingdom. Contemporary reports suggest that as many as 1,500 Black people in the kingdom secured their liberty in the wake of the Somerset decision. 

When the American Revolution began three years later, this imperial logic shaped wartime policy. 

In Lord Dunmore’s Proclamation of 1775, the royal governor of Virginia declared freedom to all enslaved people of rebel masters who fled to British lines. His action echoed the underlying principle that colonial statutes of bondage were incapable of binding subjects where imperial authority recognized liberty. Sir Henry Clinton later expanded this policy in the Phillipsburg Proclamation of 1779, which extended protection and freedom to all enslaved people who deserted rebel owners, regardless of loyalty. These proclamations marked the Crown’s practical embrace of the same constitutional reasoning Parliament had earlier codified: that colonial bondage laws could not bind against the higher authority of imperial law. 

In the spring of 1783, British General Guy Carleton, acting on behalf of the Crown, prepared to evacuate all Black Americans who wished to resettle on British soil. Demonstrating both prudence and legal acumen, he informed George Washington that if this removal were later judged a violation of the Treaty of Paris (1783), Britain was prepared to compensate the United States. By doing so, Carleton anticipated that the matter properly belonged before Congress under Article IX of the treaty, to be adjudicated in line with Anglo-American jurisprudence and emerging international law.

Carleton’s position was firmly grounded in binding English precedent. In Rex v. Stapylton (1771), Lord Chief Justice Mansfield had instructed that liberty was the presumption and that “being black will not prove the property.” The jury found Stapylton guilty for failing to establish a lawful title, and Mansfield affirmed the verdict, declaring that the Black man in question “was not the property.” One year later, Mansfield’s decision in Somerset, established that slavery could not exist absent positive law, famously declaring that the institution was “so odious, that nothing can be suffered to support it but positive law.”

In the light of these judicial rulings, it is unreasonable to even suggest that colonial slave laws and Negro codes survived Parliament’s legislative abolishment of all repugnant colonial American laws in 1766 and then six years later … the Somerset decision. Nor that the Americans would be able to sustain its burden by proving that these Afro-Englishmen were legally owned during the British colonial period. Further, by invoking Article IX of the Treaty, Carleton forced the fledgling United States to confront the dispute as due process is not subject to mere will of the legislature but must conform to “settled usages and modes of proceeding existing in common law”. At stake was a fundamental question the new Republic sought to evade: whether the 500,000 Afro-Englishmen in America were to be recognized as free under English law, or whether the United States could derogate and deny due process to some, while granting it to others, without destroying the universality of rights. Furthermore, to provide for this possibility, Carleton and Washington agreed to keep separate registries called the “Book of Negroes”, listing the name, age, and occupation of each person removed from the United States, along with the name of the former master, so that “the owner might eventually be paid for the slaves who were not entitled to their freedom by British Proclamation and promises,” as Carleton explained. 

Washington understood that the question of enslaving Black colonials could not operate within the framework of equal justice. And in a letter to Founder and fellow Virginian Richard Henry Lee, he memorialized the meeting with Carleton: 

“the measure is totally different from the letter and spirit of the treaty, but waiving the specialty of the point, leaving this decision to respective sovereign, I find it my duty to signify my readiness in conjunction with you to enter into agreement, or take measures which may be deemed expedient to prevent the future carrying away any Negroes or other property of the American people.” 

Washington’s correspondence can be fairly read as a direct admission of both knowledge and intent, as he further recognized that Britain intended to remove these individuals from the United States pursuant to Article VII, which required that such persons be “set at liberty.” Washington thus demonstrated his awareness not only of Britain’s legal position but also of the due process framework and standards by which the dispute was to be addressed and resolved under the treaty. Yet Washington openly declared his readiness to oppose that lawful outcome. His statement—“I stand ready, at all costs, to prevent Negroes from being removed from America”—was not a neutral remark but an unequivocal expression of willful resistance to the legal liberation of those individuals. The very essence and structure of Washington’s letter constitutes evidence of consciousness of guilt.

This happened in May 1783, and all of this is certainly something very, very “old.” However, this nation celebrates the Fourth of July every year and that too is very, very old. Furthermore, there are moments in history when a nation makes a choice that defines its character. The United States faced such a moment before we had our present-day Constitution, while our Articles of Confederations reigned supreme. The question before Congress was not theoretical. It was urgent, concrete, and legal:… Would half a million Black colonials… Afro-English subjects under the law… and in accordance with our international treaty with England … be granted the liberty guaranteed to them by law, or would they be abandoned to hereditary slavery? 

The British raised the issue directly. General Guy Carleton informed George Washington that these men, women and children were not property. They were subjects of the Crown and therefore entitled to liberty. If Britain’s actions in removing them back to British soil proved to be a violation of the treaty, Carleton said, Britain would pay compensation. But the matter, he insisted, must be adjudicated under Article IX of the Treaty of Paris. Article IX of the treaty provided that if disputes arose over territory, property, or the implementation of the peace, they were to be “restored or resolved without difficulty and without requiring compensation”. In practice, this meant questions were to be submitted to a tribunal for legal review… a recognition that disputes must be settled by law rather than by unilateral declaration. 

Carleton’s position was clear: as the dispute concerned whether black colonials as British subjects were protected by Article VII of the treaty and being wrongfully detained then due process protections and procedures were triggered. But what did the United States do? Congress turned silent. No tribunal was convened. No hearing was held. No recognition was given that these human beings were owed standing under law. 

Let’s be clear: America was not without law in 1783. After independence, every state and Congress itself formally adopted Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence as the basis of its legal order. That meant Magna Carta’s principle of due process … that no one shall be deprived of liberty without lawful judgment … was already binding. 

This adoption was not symbolic. It was the essence of America’s identity. The Revolution had been justified in the name of English liberties and America announced in its Declaration of Independence that “we hold these truths to be self-evident that all Englishmen are created equal.” The American colonies insisted that Parliament had violated Magna Carta, the English Bill of Rights, and the common law. To then deny due process to Black colonials was not a gap in the law … it was a betrayal of the very principles America claimed as its foundation. 

When Congress refused to act in 1783 or thereafter, it did three things at once: (1) … It denied legal standing to 500,000 Afro-English colonials, refusing to hear their claims. … (2). It violated international law, ignoring Article VII of the Treaty of Paris, which provided that all English “prisoners” held by the United States would be “set at liberty.” … (3) … Also, it repudiated Anglo-American jurisprudence, discarding Magna Carta’s central promise of due process.

This was not done under mistake, confusion, or ignorance of the law. It was a deliberate choice. It was the first violation of due process by the United States, committed at the very dawn of its independence. 

That untoward and foul act set a precedent. From then on … the complicity of the Congress and its ruling elite caused the development of an elaborate architecture of concealment, misdirection and racial repression. 

Furthermore, it is important to understand … Article VII of the treaty prohibited any “lawful impediment” to the restitution of rights and properties—a clause Britain interpreted to encompass not only Black Loyalists but all enslaved people who had secured liberty under Dunmore’s Proclamation (1775), Clinton’s Phillipsburg Proclamation (1779), or the protections of English law itself. Yet the dispute over their status remained unresolved. 

In practice, only about 3,000 Black colonials succeeded in leaving the United States with British forces in November 1783, departing for Nova Scotia, London, and Sierra Leone. Their liberty was recorded in dual registries known as the “Book of Negroes”—with the American copy preserved in the United States National Archives, Washington, D.C., and the British copy held at The National Archives, Kew, London. Seen in sequence, the Bill of Rights (1689), the American Colonies Act (1766), Somerset (1772), the imperial Proclamations of 1775 and 1779, and the Treaty of Paris (1783) reveal a coherent constitutional through-line. Parliament had already pronounced colonial American statutes repugnant to imperial authority were “null and void to all intents and purposes whatsoever.” Mansfield’s judgment in Somerset enforced that nullity within the courts of the realm, liberating Somerset and confirming the principle for others similarly situated. Dunmore’s and Clinton’s proclamations operationalized the same doctrine on the battlefield, transforming imperial protection into emancipation. 

The Declaration of Independence internationalized this dispute, as it began with sweeping words and in the end, Article I … of the Treaty of Paris caused Britain to relinquish sovereignty to the United States, effective January 14, 1784. 

The United States was free … however, the treaty did not leave liberty for the 500,000 Afro-English colonials to the whims of sovereignty. Disputes regarding these British subjects were to be settled by law, not silence. 

Moreover, liberty was a personal right recognized under Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence and could not be revoked ex post facto by Anglo-American law, as the Republic adopted English law. 

Importantly, the United States did not argue that as a sovereign… earlier imperial legislative acts were being declared void; instead, the American were arguing ownership of black colonial based upon abolished colonial slave laws and Negro codes. 

Taken together, these moments confirm that slavery in the United States was not lawfully inherited during British colonial rule. It was, at all relevant moments, an abolished colonial practice—by way of Parliament’s American Colonies Act in 1766, which occurred during the colonial period. As the United States approaches the 250th anniversary of independence, the commemoration of the Declaration of Independence demands a candid acknowledgment of a long-neglected truth: colonial Blacks were not, and under English law could not have been, excluded from its universal proclamation of liberty and personal freedom. Slavery in the United States was not lawfully inherited. Colonial slave laws and Negro codes had been legislatively abolished by the British imperial government well before the Revolution commenced in April 1775. Thus, the enslavement and exploitation of approximately 500,000 Black colonials at the birth of the Republic was criminal, nothing less. It was a deliberate American breach of English constitutional law and of the founding principle that “all men are created equal.” 

The ultimate acceptance of colonial slavery’s extralegal origin, abolition and insinuation into U.S. constitutionalism such as the Fugitive Slave Act, Three-Fifth Compromise and the Electoral College requires recognition at the highest levels of government, culture, and education. The upcoming celebration of independence should contemplate:

Acknowledging slavery’s illegality: Admit or interrogate the question of whether colonial American slave laws and Negro codes derogated the English Bill of Rights (1689) and were abolished by British imperial governmental laws before the American Revolution; and acknowledge that racial slavery in the British American colonies was an extralegal practice when this nation declared independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain in July 1776. …. 

Necessarily, this would reframe the 250th July 4th commemoration: … Thus, recognize that the Declaration’s ideal of liberty encompassed all colonials as being equal under the rule of Anglo-American law. …. 

Clarify accountability: … Moreover, address the fact that the post-Revolutionary enslavement and repression of Black colonials was wrong and admit that slavery was not a British legacy. In furtherance, fashion and advocate for executive proclamation, like Gerald R. Ford, Proclamation 4417 as he admitted the wrongness of the Japanese-American interment’. Also, the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, Public Law 100-383: which apologized on behalf of the people of the United States for the fundamental injustice of slavery, Jim Crow laws and systemic repression. …. 

Educate the public: Shift cultural memory from a story of inherited inevitability to one of deliberate violation of law . …. 

Reframing the debate in these terms transforms public discourse:

No longer only about immorality, but about illegality. 

No longer only about regret, but about accountability. 

No longer a story of passive inheritance, but of active violation of Anglo-American law and international norms.

Historical documents support …. colonial America’s elites saddled this nation with the blemish of black slavery. … They passed extralegal slave laws and Negro codes, and even after Parliament’s English Bill of Rights codifying fundamental habeas corpus protections for all; they furthered the practice of hereditary slavery by making it a crime to teach Black colonials to read or write, —was a colonial enactment not grounded in English common law. … Their untoward purpose was to keep Black people ignorant … to prevent petitions … resistance … or escape. … These were not laws of justice … but instruments of corruption and control. …

And today … when the word “woke” is hurled as an insult … it reveals something deeper. … What is truly feared is not the word itself … but the awakening it names. … The awakening to suppressed truths: … that this nation was built on the theft of Black labor … enforced through violence … and disguised as law. … To awaken … is to unmask the fraudulence of America’s founding story. … And so … looking backward … becomes the most forward-looking act we can perform. … 

Nothing could more plainly establish both consciousness of guilt and unlawful intent than Washington’s admission. His words supply the very elements of wrongful action: knowledge of the legal rights of Black colonials, acknowledgment of England’s lawful position, and an overt commitment to frustrate that lawful outcome through personal and political action. Conversely, British General Carleton commanded his troops to “remain on duty until every black man, woman, and child who wanted to leave the United States is safely moved to British soil.” However, the United States employed detention, coercion, and deception to obstruct the mass departure of black colonials to British ships. 

By November 28, 1783, when the British left America, only 3,000 Afro-Englishmen, memorialized in the Book of Negroes, had gained passage, freedom, and were transported out of the United States. Meanwhile, 500,000 other Afro-Englishmen found themselves stranded in the United States. Notably, despite Washington’s assurance to British General Carleton that Congress would address the treaty dispute, Congress did not do so, fearing disunification and internal strife. Moreover, none of the 13 state governments accorded fundamental due process of law to any of the 500,000 Afro-Englishmen, and they were summarily committed to toil as lifelong slaves in the United States. 

These 500,000 black individuals and their descendants became the foundation of America’s slave-based economy, violating the rule of law and international norms. Then the U.S. sought to codify this misanthropic action by passing a proslavery constitution in 1789. Taken together, these milestones demonstrate that slavery was not a lawful practice under English or imperial law and was not lawfully inherited from the British. Slavery was not legally insinuated into the United States; instead, it was established by fraud: an extralegal system of racial bondage created through lawlessness, violence, and violation of international norms.

Over the past decade, the term “woke” has been weaponized in American political discourse. For many on the Right, it is deployed as a cultural insult—shorthand for mocking those who pursue racial justice, equity, or social awareness. But beneath the surface, the term operates as more than ridicule. It functions as a double entendre: outwardly derision, inwardly confession. It reveals both an awareness of suppressed history and a fear that this history, once fully recognized, will demand a reckoning. 

Afrofuturism commands us to embrace and rediscover America’s origin story. The Treaty of Paris required liberty for all Englishmen. Yet those guarantees were denied. Instead of the fundamental due process of law, 500,000 Afro-Englishmen were handed chains. Instead of equality, they were exploited and written into compromise—the Three-Fifths Clause, the Fugitive Slave Acts, and the Electoral College. Enslaving black colonials was not inherent in British rule. Slavery in the United States was the product of lawlessness. Moreover, this Republic was not founded upon an allegiance to the rule of law, but upon the deliberate exclusion of black people whose freedom had already been secured and guaranteed by the rule of law. When America denied fundamental due process to half a million Afro-Englishmen after the Revolution, it did not inherit the law—it shattered it. It did not build upon liberty—it built upon lawlessness. And that betrayal, carried forward through compromise and constitution alike, remains the nation’s unburied and rediscovered truth. Racial slavery in the American colonies was an extralegal system, enforced not by law but by governmental corruption and power. It was a relic of colonial America when the 13 British colonies declared independence in July 1776, as the Founders complained in the Declaration. And yet, America was founded upon this legal fiction and enslaved and exploited 500,000 Afro-Englishmen after the American Revolution ended. 

Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, simultaneously knew of racial slavery’s illegitimacy and yet furthered its perpetuation. He claimed to tremble for his country and feared that God’s justice would not forever remain asleep. His fear was prophetic, for the contradictions of the founding have echoed across the centuries: liberty proclaimed while black bondage endured; equality asserted, yet inequality under U.S. law remains its enduring systemic hallmark. The work of history is not only to uncover contradictions, but to allow for reckoning with the legacies they leave behind.

That is why institutions like the National Museum of African American History and Culture and the Association for the Study of African American Life and History are indispensable. … They insist that African American history is not a marginal footnote in the American experiment, instead, it is the course threading, seamlessly, interwoven throughout the American story. … They remind us that legal fictions carry real consequences, and that when the law betrays its first principles, the wound is not temporary—it becomes a festering sore that infects the civil life of a nation.

Frederick Douglass’s warning in his 1852 speech “What To a Slave Is the Fourth of July” remains a cautionary warning still: 

that the Fourth of July is a day of mourning for those excluded from its promise. To mourn is not to despair; it is to refuse false consolation and to seek truth. In mourning, we can rediscover the origins of the Republic. In rediscovering, we demand that the law be reclaimed for justice rather than subjugation.

If America is to endure another 250 years, it will not be by clinging to the fictions of the past but by confronting them. Only by acknowledging that slavery in the United States was not inherited from the British … that it was a betrayal of both Anglo-American law and America’s professed ideals … can we begin to build a Republic that lives up to its founding promise.

The task before us is therefore clear: to preserve our struggles, to confront injustice, and to reimagine the history of America, not as a fictional story …. but as a living reality. 

To delve deeper into this history, share this content and visit us at the Wells Center on American Exceptionalism. Stay tuned for more videos and insights.