Featuring: Larry Kenneth Alexander
Transcript:
Slavery in the American colonies is the root of the myth that America in 1776 was intended to be a white nation. This belief was tied to the false narrative that Black colonials were lawful slaves owned by white colonials based on valid colonial slave codes during colonial times. Today, we confront this myth with the clarity of history and the courage of truth. When we look back to the early days of this land, we see a story far different from the one white supremacy tells. Many of the early European settlers were of the peasant class, fleeing their own struggles in search of opportunity. Yet they were indoctrinated with an insidious sense of racial and cultural superiority, furthered and stoked by colonial government officials and the planter class to justify the subjugation of indigenous peoples and the exploitation of enslaved Africans.
This sense of racial superiority did not arise naturally. It was embedded in extra-legal colonial slave laws, social structures, and cultural norms. It was manufactured by graft to sustain power for corrupt British colonial government officials and the planter class. Yet, let us remember this: when the first Africans arrived in Jamestown in 1619, they were not slaves. They were indentured servants, protected under English law. Colonial charters required officials to uphold the rule of English law, and English law, the Magna Carta of 1215, and the enduring principles of English common law rejected the enslavement of human beings.
Colonial officials, in concert with planters and merchants, willfully defied their colonial charters. They turned a blind eye to English law and enacted colonial slave codes and Negro laws, practices that were never sanctioned by England’s legal framework. These acts were nothing less than racial tyranny and exploitation of power to impose hereditary bondage on people of African descent. This was not law; it was lawlessness, born of personal will and unrestrained despotism. The practice of slavery in the American colonies was not born of legal right but of corruption and greed.
History tells us that colonial slave codes lacked the force of law. They were corrupt acts, and when Parliament passed the American Colonies Act of 1766, those slave codes were legislatively abolished for all purposes whatsoever, as they stood in open defiance to parliamentary sovereignty. The Founding Fathers, when they declared independence in 1776, accused King George III of tyranny, stating he had abolished the colony’s most valuable laws. Yet, in rejecting English rule, they preserved English common law to ensure stability in their new nation. Thomas Jefferson, one of those Founding Fathers, later lamented the failure to address slavery in his writings. In Notes on the State of Virginia, he admitted that slavery was a corrosive influence on both the enslaved and the enslaver, a cancer that would ultimately corrupt the moral fabric of the nation.
Today, we stand on the precipice of a reckoning with this history. The myth of a white nation was never grounded in law, justice, or truth. It was built on stolen labor, stolen land, and a stolen narrative. We must dismantle this lie and reclaim the full complex history of this country—a history that belongs to all of us, regardless of race, creed, or origin. Let us embrace the truth. America’s founding promise was not to perpetuate racial tyranny but to aspire to liberty and justice for all. It is an aspiration we have yet to fully achieve, but one we must relentlessly pursue. The power to transform the legacy of slavery lies not in denying our history but in confronting it with honesty, humility, and the resolve to build a nation that lives up to its highest ideals. Please share and visit our website at Wells Center on American Exceptionalism and look for future videos in this series.