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“A More Perfect Union” 
Senator Barack Obama’s speech in 
Philadelphia on March 18, 2008.
“The government gives them the drugs, builds 
bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then 
wants us to sing ‘God Bless America’. No, no, 
no, God damn America, that’s in the Bible for 
killing innocent people….God damn America for 
treating our citizens as less than human. God 
damn America for as long as she acts like she is 
God and she is supreme.” — 2003 sermon
“The document they produced was eventually 
signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained 
by this nation’s original sin of slavery, a question 
that divided the colonies and brought the 
convention to a stalemate until the founders 
chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at 
least twenty more years, and to leave any final 
resolution to future generations….
“The document they produced was eventually 
signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained 
by this nation’s original sin of slavery, a question 
that divided the colonies and brought the 
convention to a stalemate until the founders 
chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at 
least twenty more years, and to leave any final 
resolution to future generations….
Article 1. Section 2. Paragraph 3: 
“Representatives and direct Taxes shall be 
apportioned among the several States which may be 
included within this Union, according to their 
respective Numbers, which shall be determined by 
adding to the whole Number of free Persons … 
and…three fifths of all other Persons.”
As William Faulkner once wrote, ‘The past 
isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even 
past.’ We do not need to recite here the 
history of racial injustice in this country. But 
we do need to remind ourselves that so many 
of the disparities that exist in the African- 
American community today can be directly 
traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier 
generation that suffered under the brutal 
legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.”
The 
Peculiar 
Institution
Slavery
kingdoms
absolute monarchies
large landowners
small landowners
slaves
protected
property
hereditary
POWs
400,000
4,000,000
“Middle Passage”
Laid out spoon-fashion on the narrow decks of sailing ships, 
we were transported to this New World so closely packed that 
the back of the head of one of us nestled between the legs of 
another. Sometimes 720 of us were jammed into a space 20 
feet wide, 120 feet long, and 5 feet high. Week after week we 
would lie there, tortured and gasping, as the ship heaved 
and tossed over the waves. In the summer, down in the 
suffocating depths of those ships, on an eight-or ten-week 
voyage, we would go crazed for lack of air and water and in 
the morning the crew of the ship would discover many of us 
dead, clutching in rigor mortis at the throats of our friends, 
wives, or children (14).
During the seventeenth century, to protect themselves against the 
overwhelming influx of us, some governments launched numerous 
men-of-war to track down and seize the slave ships. We captives 
did not know whether to feel dread or joy when a man-of-war 
was sighted, for the captain would command that a few of us be 
pitched alive into the sea as moral bait to compel the captain of 
the pursuing ship to desist from his duty. Every mile or so one of 
us would be bound fast to a cask or spar and tossed overboard 
with the hope that the sight of our forlorn struggle against the 
sea would stir such compassion in the heart of the captain of the 
man-of-war that he would abandon pursuit, thereby enabling 
the slave ships to escape (15).
At other times, when we were sick, we were thrown alive into 
the sea and the captain, pilgrim of progress, would 
studiously enter into the ship’s log two words that would 
balance all earthly accounts: “jettisoned cargo”. 
At still other times we went on hunger strikes; but the time 
allotted us to starve to death was often too short, and the 
ship would arrive in port before we had outwitted the slave 
traders. The more ambitious slavers possessed instruments 
with which to pry our teeth apart and feed us forcibly….
To quench all desire for mutiny in us, they would 
sometimes decapitate a few of us and impale our 
black heads upon the tips of the spars, just as 
years later they impaled our heads upon the tips 
of pine trees for miles along the dusty highways 
of Dixie to frighten us into obedience (15).
10-15%
1807 (GB), 1808 (US)
entrenchment
cotton engine
cotton ‘gin
“2nd Middle Passage”
1,000,000 
!CD#%E%!"7#%
$350…$1500
$350…$1500
“average” slave
hierarchy
1) house
1) house 
2) hotel/artisan
1) house 
2) hotel/artisan 
3) field hand
????
Theory #1 
F(/G)*01E366,6*0@%/(@0-%
<LIFE SPANS>
Southern Whites
Southern Whites
Northern White WC
Enslaved African-Americans
Southern Whites? 
Northern white WC? 
Enslaved Af-Ams? 
!"##$
Southern Whites 
Northern white WC 
Enslaved Af-Ams
???? F(/G)*01E366,6*0@%/(@0-%
Theory #2 
H6I2J(-(K,23-%/(@0-%
%&'()*+$,)-.(/$ 
!"#$%&'()(*(+&,-"%.(/0(*.%&/1#0(2034564,0#"(#07(205%""%156#"(8/9%%<!D9DL%
???? H6I2J(-(K,23-%/(@0-%
5/15 
!"7#%
segregation
discrimination
0.)).'1$#)2+3$4'55./2($
“A covenant with death & 
an agreement with hell.”
Rev. Jeremiah Wright?
65*3*5.7-$829:)'//$
Narrative of the Life of 
Frederick Douglass 
;<5.=*($>+$?.1/*)@A$
<10% 
<(M%N(1*J01.016L%
riots
riots
Conclusion 
O(P%*(%0.@%*J0%H02)-,31%Q.6R*)R(.S%
“[A]lmost exclusively slave labor except as 
to the Boss men…enables me of course to 
compete with other manufacturers.” 
T(60GJ%UV%&.@016(.:%!"8C% 
W10@0K31%Q1(.%X(1B6%

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