AMERICA AT 250 – A BLACK RETROSPECTIVE
1776 – 1825 A Government for White Men Only
By AISHA POWELL
It was a typical summer afternoon in Philadelphia in the late 1700s. It was sweltering hot and the air was thick with humidity and the deafening sounds of a city that bustled with people anxiously awaiting the birth of a nation.
After nearly three weeks of debates, arguments and concessions, Thomas Jefferson – who owned about 175 slaves at the time – penned the initial rough draft of what would become the Declaration of Independence. Believed by many to be the most impactful piece of literature in Western civilization, the document served as the ideological bedrock in the creation of the United States of America.
Nestled in the 1,320-word proclamation is a phrase that has been coveted, replicated and acclaimed for the nearly three centuries since it was first publicly read from the courtyard of Philadelphia’ s Independence Hall: all men are created equal.
Those words – and the document’ s assertion that citizens of the new nation possessed the“ unalienable rights” to“ life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” – must have stung the ears and offended the consciousness of Robert Hemings.
Hemings was Jefferson’ s enslaved valet.
He was the son of a woman of African descent who was held in life-long slavery by Jefferson’ s father-in-law. Robert, along with his mother and siblings, including his sister, Sally, were inherited by Jefferson when his father-in-law died.
10