Our goal is to understand the roots of racism in our country, that are based on the development of slavery and how it was institutionalized as part of the country's economic and social system by being incorporated into the Constitution.
IF YOUR LAST NAME STARTS WITH A-I, do the following assignment:
Read an excerpt from the article "Slavery, the Constitution and a Lasting Legacy."Read only the intro and the sections"American Slavery and the Rise of Profitable Racism" & "Constitutional Compromises on Slavery Set Tone for the Future"
https://www.montpelier.org/learn/slavery-constitution-lasting-legacy(Links to an external site.)
1.) Write a gut reaction. What was new to you, insightful, disturbing, etc.?
2.). How did the U.S. founders solve the contradiction that the Constitution was based on the right that all people had the right to freedom, yet their was a system of slavery that treated the enslaved as property?
3.) What does the author argue were the reasons that the founders compromised and accepted slavery as part of the Constitution?
4.) Choose from one of the following clauses in the Constitution and explain what it was and how it legally established slavery into the fabric of the entire nation: the 3/5 clause, the importation clause or the fugitive slave clause.