Featuring: Larry Kenneth Alexander
Transcript:
Let us be clear. The notion that Britain was a racially homogeneous nation, that English freedom was only for those of Anglo-Saxon or Norman descent, this is a myth rooted not in history, but in the dangerous ideology of white supremacy. Throughout its history, Britain was diverse, with people of African, Afro-Caribbean, and other origins contributing to the tapestry of British society, as merchants, sailors, servants, musicians, and citizens under the law. The records from the 16th and 17th centuries show this, and history affirms it.
The truth, often inconvenient but inescapable, is that Great Britain’s principles of freedom and the rule of law recognize no color line. The truth is that the Founding Fathers, in denying black colonials their rightful liberty, knowingly veered from these principles, adopting a system that contradicted the very laws they claimed to uphold. And so, the legacy of liberty was tainted, not because Britain withheld it, but because it was willfully denied in America. In the 18th century, the British poet William Cowper penned, “Slaves cannot breathe in England. If their lungs receive our air, that moment they are free. They touch our country and their shackles fall.”
In these lines lies a powerful truth, a truth grounded in the principles of English law and one that echoed through Britain’s courts. England’s Chief Justice, Lord John Holt, echoed this when he declared in 1702, “As soon as a Negro comes to England, he is free. One may be a villain in England, but not a slave.” This was no mere sentiment. It was a conviction deeply rooted in Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence and enshrined in the cornerstones of English law as the first 19 kidnapped Africans coming to the colony of Virginia in 1619 were indentured servants, not slaves.
And from the Magna Carta of 1215, to the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679, and later, the English Bill of Rights of 1689, which codified habeas corpus protection for all in the kingdom, English law held liberty sacred, fiercely defending against arbitrary imprisonment and declaring that every person was entitled to due process and protection under the law. In this historical context, we leap forward to colonial America’s founding fathers, on the eve of the Declaration of Independence, grappling with a truth that challenged their own ambitions. Slavery in the 13 colonies was never legally authorized in the American colonies.
Parliament, through the American Colonies Act of 1766, legislatively abolished colonial America’s slave codes because they denied and questioned parliament’s supreme legislative authority. In the Somerset decision in 1772, England’s highest court made it clear that slavery was not allowed and approved by the law of this kingdom. This odious practice could only be a legal institution in the kingdom if authorized by positive law, a legislative power held solely by parliament, which it never exercised.
The founders complained in the Declaration of Independence in 1776 that England’s King George III was a tyrant for abolishing our most valuable laws. And yet, in their desperation to maintain the institution of slavery, these same founding fathers engaged in a grave deception, claiming that black colonials fell outside the British community, that their humanity and liberty could somehow be legislatively erased by colonial assemblies based upon their race. This lie, cloaked in the language of liberty, would go on to stain the very foundation of the American Republic.
And though that truth was obscured in The Birth of a Nation, let us carry it forward, recognizing that liberty is indivisible, that freedom knows no race, and that every person deserves the justice and dignity they are due. Please share this video. Visit our website at Wells Center on American Exceptionalism and look for future videos.