NJ Transit and Coach USA Death Victims Advocacy

  Historical Context: The Constitution and Slavery by Steven Mintz On the 200th anniversary of the ratification of the US Constitution, Thurgood Marshall, the first African American person to sit on the Supreme Court, said that the 1788 Constitution was “defective from the start.” While some members of the Constitutional Convention had voiced “eloquent objections” to slavery, Marshall said they “consented to a document which laid a foundation for the tragic events which were to follow.” By “tragic events,” he meant all the cases of abuse and exploitation propagated by the system of slavery. Was Thurgood Marshall right? Was the Constitution a pro-slavery document? Convention delegate Charles Pinckney certainly thought so when he reported back to the South Carolina House of Representatives that “considering all circumstances, we have made the best terms for the security of this species of property [enslaved people] it was in our power to make.” To fully answer Marshall’s questions, h...

  The original U.S. Constitution of 1787 was not created for Black people T he original U.S. Constitution of 1787 was not created for Black people , as it was drafted by an all-white, male delegation that purposefully excluded Black individuals from the rights, privileges, and protections of citizenship. Instead, the original framework protected the institution of slavery and treated Black people as a subservient class to benefit white landowners and preserve a fragile political union. However, through subsequent amendments, the Constitution was radically reshaped to legally include and protect Black Americans. [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 ] The Original 1787 Constitution and Enslavement [ 1 ] The framers intentionally avoided using the words "slave" or "slavery" in the original text, but they included several clauses that codified racial oppression: [ 1 , 2 , 3 ] The Three-Fifths Clause (Article I, Section 2) : It dictated that enslaved people would count as three-fift...