The Founding was for Whites. Or so it would seem, according to most contemporary histories or legal accounts of the era. Black Writers of the Founding Era, edited by Jim Basker and Nicole Seary, adds important color to that history. This edited volume is the most comprehensive compilation of Black-authored editorials, letters, court petitions, sermons, and poems to date, and the first such compilation of Black writings during the Founding in over 50 years.
Very few Black men and women at the Founding were literate. Whereas 90% of the white population was literate in 1790, roughly 90% of the Black population at the Founding were enslaved, and a very small percentage of the entire Black population (5-10%) was literate. In two states—South Carolina and Georgia—teaching an enslaved person to read and write was illegal. The few extant Black writings have been difficult to find, or out of print. The paucity of Black writings from the Framing has inevitably led to their absence in historical and legal accounts. As a result, it has been assumed that the Founding was not for them: the Constitution was not theirs, and the Revolution was fought only for those they served ala. In part, this has led many to conclude, ala Justice Thurgood Marshall’s famous Bicentennial speech, that “We the People” excluded Black Americans and turn to alternative narratives of American history like the 1619 Project.
Enter Black Writers of the Founding Era. This compilation of 200 texts written between 1760 and 1800 gathers known and previously unpublished sources of all varieties—letters, diaries, autobiographies, editorials, sermons, petitions, and poems. It is all the more valuable given the scarcity of Black writings from the period. With each text, the editors have helpfully provided an introductory note containing historical context as well as connecting other documents and writers together.
More, through the anthology, as Annette Gordon-Reed writes in her elegant introduction, early Black Americans find their voice. Via the unmediated words of these early writers, a vibrant story of the Black Founding is told. These free and enslaved men and women powerfully (and universally) campaigned for the freedom of their race even as they advocated for American Independence and the Constitution. They conceived of themselves as freemen, citizens, and Americans. They believed that the best hope for their liberation was bound up in the American quest for liberation from Britain and through the Constitution. They were a part of and helped shape We the People.
This edited volume provides a valuable source for the historical and legal communities alike. Through it, historians can seek to understand the views of Black men and women about a host of subjects: not only about the Revolution and Constitution, but how they conceptualized themselves as political actors and their relationships vis-à-vis one another. They were agents who acted for themselves and on behalf of their communities.
Too, Black Writers should be consulted by advocates and judges who engage in Original Public Meaning interpretation: the view that the Constitution should be interpreted in light of the meaning ascribed it by the public. Such a view has been required in several areas of constitutional law by the Supreme Court. Yet the resultant judicial accounts of the “American public” at the Founding have invariably been White. Now, with the easy accessibility provided by Black Writers, they need not be. The 500,000 Black Founders who fought alongside white soldiers, and those who advocated for the Constitution through editorials and identified themselves as freemen, citizens, and Americans can—and must—be represented. More, inclusion of Black voices within accounts of Original Public Meaning will make that interpretive method more legitimate because more inclusive and complete. As such, Black Writers should become part of the essential library of any serious originalist, along with Madison’s Notes of the Constitutional Convention, the Federalist Papers, and state ratification debates.
To assist historians and to aid judges and legal advocates in providing fuller accounts of Original Public Meaning, Black Writers might be improved in a subsequent or digital edition. Although the volume is roughly organized chronologically, dates are not provided in the table of contents. Too, there is no easy mapping of all writings by a single author. The index mostly lists individuals and place names rather than legal topics. To make the volume more useful for the legal community in particular, it would be helpful if the volume were digitized, made searchable, and indexed in a way that links texts to legal topics, like clauses of the Constitution.
Despite the few areas where it could be improved in a next edition, Black Writers is an invaluable contribution to documentary editing efforts of the Founding. It provides a rich new source for the historical and legal communities, in which Black Founders find a voice and make the Founding theirs.
