SEA-Change Topic Archive

Learn about the landmark Somerset v. Stewart case and its impact on slavery, British law, and colonial resistance. Discover how justice, corruption, and economic interests shaped the fight for freedom and self-governance.

Learn how Virginia’s unlawful slave codes violated English law and how Parliament’s authority, including the Somerset decision, rendered slavery legally invalid.

Explore the contradictions of the American Revolution as Lord Dunmore’s 1775 proclamation offering freedom to enslaved individuals exposed the Patriots’ hypocrisy. Learn how the Battle of Kemp’s Landing highlights the courage of the enslaved and reshapes American history.

Explore how English law in 1775 denied slavery as a legal institution and granted Black colonials the same liberty rights as white colonials.

Uncover the truth about slavery in colonial America. Learn how British laws abolished colonial slave codes before the Revolution, revealing slavery as a defiance of British law—not its legacy.

Discover how colonial slave laws were abolished before America’s founding. Challenge the myths and confront the contradictions in the nation’s history.

Expose the corrupt origins of slavery in colonial America. Understand its unlawful foundation and commit to ensuring history doesn’t repeat itself.

Explore how colonial slavery was a deliberate choice, not an inevitability. Acknowledge history’s injustices and strive for a future of dignity and equality.

Larry Kenneth Alexander reveals how the 1660s established hereditary slavery in America, transforming society and embedding systemic injustice for centuries.

Discover how colonial elites in the 1660s transformed African laborers into lifelong slaves, creating systemic racism and bypassing legal norms for profit.