Born a slave, not a person
Some of our fellow citizens would rather schoolchildren celebrate U.S. successes in their American history and shun learning from our mistakes. That’s the impression left by the GOP’s contrived controversy over critical race theory that, post election, seems less a controversy du jour.
Dahlia Lithwick includes in her Slate offering this morning extracts from a recent speech given by Judge Robert L. Wilkins of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The occasion was the unveiling ceremony for the judge’s portrait in October.
“What struck me most about Wilkins’ speech,” Lithwick writes, “was that he used it to detail a sometimes submerged narrative about the complicated meaning of freedom: He told the story of his own family’s long journey through U.S. constitutional history, a very different encounter with the Framers’ ideas about freedom and justice.”
Wilkins’ genealogy traced back multiple generations to sometime around 1810 when his great-great-great-great grandmother, Edie Saulsbury, was born during the presidency of James Madison, “considered by many the father of our Constitution.” Edie was born a slave, “and thus was not even considered a ‘person’ within the meaning of Madison’s Constitution.”
Lithwick publishes some of his reflections on how the Constitution impacted their lives:
My maternal grandmother, Marcella Hayes, was with us during my investiture to become a District Court Judge. She has now gone on to glory. She was a documenter of our family history, and I inherited that habit from her. Inspired by my Grannyma, I have traced the maternal side of my family back six generations, to my great-great-great-great grandmother, Edie Saulsbury. Edie was born sometime around 1810, when James Madison, considered by many the father of our Constitution, was President of these United States. She was born into slavery, and thus was not even considered a “person” within the meaning of Madison’s Constitution. She was impregnated by a white man at the tender age of 16, where the legal system did not even define the rape of a Black woman by a white man as a crime, did not allow a Black person to testify in court against the white person anyway, and made it a crime punishable by 30 lashes on the bare back for a Black person to raise a hand against a white person, even to defend oneself from being ravished. Edie gave birth to that child, a boy named Alexander, who would endure a life of slavery. She would later give birth to 12 more children, conceived with my fourth great grandfather, a man named David, who was enslaved and belonged to a neighboring family.
My father, John Wilkins, passed away almost 40 years ago. But he is here through me and my brother Larry, and through my many cousins and other relatives on the Wilkins side here today. I have also been able to trace my paternal side back six generations. My paternal grandfather’s name was Rev. George R. Wilkins. His maternal grandfather, my great-great grandfather, was named George Richardson. George Richardson was born in 1848, and, when asked, during the 1900 census, he reported to the census taker that he was born in South Carolina, his mother was born in South Carolina, but that his father was born “at sea.” Think about that: The most plausible explanation for this series of events is that George Richardson’s father, my great- great-great grandfather, was born aboard a slave ship. That would also mean that—six generations back—my fourth great grandmother delivered my third great grandfather in the filthy bowels of a slave vessel. I have not yet been able to determine my fourth great grandmother‘s name, but for the moment, let’s call her Nancy. George Richardson named one of his daughters Nancy, so perhaps he did so in honor of his grandma.
Consider for a moment the circumstances under which those two of my fourth-great grandmothers, Edie and Nancy, lived and brought children into this world. Circumstances of kidnapping, coercion, abuse and despair. And all that vile treatment was absolutely legal. All of it was condoned and facilitated by Madison’s Constitution.
A lasting irony then is that many among the federal judiciary today view “how Madison and the other founding fathers interpreted the meaning of the words in our Constitution as infallible,” Wilkins observes:
Those founding fathers drafted a Constitution that denied the humanity of Edie and Nancy; it didn’t even consider them to be “persons”, and you want to tell me that the only way to properly interpret the Constitution is to endorse and adopt their value system without question? That might honor Madison, but it dishonors Edie and Nancy. I cannot stand for that; but more importantly, no one should.
Yet many on the highest court in the land firmly and proudly stand on it.
It’s Happy Hollandaise time here at Hullabaloo. If you like to throw a little something in the old Christmas stocking it would be most appreciated.