1. “A More Perfect Union”
Senator Barack Obama’s speech in
Philadelphia on March 18, 2008.
2.
3.
4. “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 damnAmerica, 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
5.
6. “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….
7. “The document they produced
was stained
by this nation’s original sin of slavery
8. “The document they produced
was stained
by this nation’s original sin of slavery
9. Article 1. Section 2. Paragraph 3:
“Representatives and directTaxes 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.”
10. AsWilliam 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 theAfrican-
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.”
30. Laid out spoon-fashion on the narrow decks of sailing ships,
we were transported to this NewWorld 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).
84. “[A]lmost exclusively slave labor except as to the Boss
men…enables me of course to compete with other
manufacturers.”
Joseph R. Anderson, 1847
Tredegar Iron Works
Joseph R. Anderson, 1847
Tredegar Iron Works
BACKSTORY