When acknowledged at all, Robert is widely referred to as Jefferson’ s“ valet” or“ body servant” in many historical records. He was just 14 years old when he was taken to Philadelphia in 1776 by the future U. S. president. During the four months that Jefferson stayed in Philadelphia, Robert Hemings was forced to attend to Jefferson’ s many needs – including dressing him, providing his meals, and maintaining his appearance.
Hemings is the embodiment of the hypocrisy of the Declaration of Independence. His enslavement by Jefferson, that document’ s principal author, is irrefutable evidence of the silent text of this country’ s founding documents. The unspoken reality is that the United States of America was created as the world’ s first apartheid nation.
That silent text of the Declaration of Independence was revealed in the plain text of the Constitution that the United States adopted in 1787.
It acknowledged Black people only through the lens of slavery, asserting that enslaved people of African descent were“ other persons” and reduced their worth to three-fifths of a white person.
The Bill of Rights, which came four years later in 1791, guaranteed civil rights and liberties to all individuals except Blacks, who the Constitution had earlier declared to be property, not citizens. Therefore, they possessed no rights that the government was bound to respect.
Systemically excluded from the protections of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, Black people created their own bylaws to govern their communities, such as the African Union Society in 1780 and the Free African Society of Philadelphia in 1787.
Robert Hemings and Thomas Jefferson
Over the next decade, Blacks found themselves in a quiet, but tumultuous,
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