The Who Behind it All
Discover Elizabeth Key’s 17th-century legal battle in Virginia, challenging hereditary slavery by asserting rights under English common law.
The Whatsoever
Explore how the Declaratory Act of 1766 asserted British legislative authority over American colonies, nullifying conflicting colonial laws and fueling revolutionary sentiments.
The What Behind it All
Explore how English common law deemed slavery illegal in American colonies, challenging the legitimacy of colonial slave codes.
For American racism, slavery was only the beginning
Ending our fixation on slavery and focusing on what happened next could help us move on from the argument that racism in America…
Radical history
“The thesis that U.S. slavery was not legal creates cultural and cognitive dissonance—it necessitates a rewriting of America’s historiography,” Alexander says. “This has radical implications for academia.”
The Ratification of the Treaty of Paris of 1783
Explore how the 1783 Treaty of Paris impacted enslaved individuals, leading to British evacuations and the unaddressed status of 500,000 Afro-Englishmen in the U.S.
General Henry Clinton: The Phillipsburg Proclamation
Learn how General Henry Clinton’s 1779 Phillipsburg Proclamation offered freedom to enslaved Africans in American colonies, aiming to disrupt the Patriot war effort.
Thomas Jefferson: Roman Law Gambit
Explore how Thomas Jefferson’s proposal to adopt Roman law aimed to legitimize slavery in the U.S., circumventing English common law prohibitions.
Lord Dunmore: America’s First Emancipator of Slaves
The freedom lawsuit of a mixed-race woman named Elizabeth Key in 1655 brought before a colonial court drove Virginia’s House of Burgesses, its…
James Somerset’s Habeas Corpus Trial
The ethnic group Afro-Englishmen… born in the North American colonies during colonial times and Africans brought to the North American colonies who were…