A statue in honor of the black soldiers of the American Revolution
Black History Month : Black Rights and the Constitution
part of a much larger article https://iusbvision.wordpress.com/2011/01/24/black-heroes-and-founders-of-the-great-american-revolution/
By The Founders:
”When the Constitution of the United States was framed, colored men voted in a majority of these States; they voted in the State of New York, in Pennsylvania, in Massachusetts, in Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Delaware and North Carolina; and long after the adoption of the Constitution, they continued to vote in North Carolina and Tennessee also. The Constitution of the United States makes no distinction of color.”
~ The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution by Wm Cooper Neil & Harriet Beecher Stowe 1855
In fact, a number of state constitutions protected voting rights for blacks. The state constitutions of Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania (all 1776), New York (1777), Massachusetts (1780), and New Hampshire (1784) included black suffrage. In 1874, Robert Brown Elliot, a member of the House of Representatives from South Carolina and a black man, stated ”When did Massachusetts sully her proud record by placing on her statute-book any law which admitted to the ballot the white man and shut out the black man? She has never done it; she will not do it.”
Continue reading Black History Month : Black Rights and the Constitution
