FRAMING THE FRAMERS
By Mumia Abu-Jamal
[Col. Writ. 9/8/01]
"Is it possible for a class which exterminates the native peoples of the Americas, replaces them by raping Africa for humans it then denigrates and dehumanizes as slaves, while cheapening and degrading its own working class -- is it possible for such a class to create democracy, equality, and to advance the cause for human freedom?" - - U.S. Historian Brian PriceThere is a movement in the law, said to be conservative, that claims to represent the "original intent" of the "founding fathers." This movement is the basis of a school of legal scholarship and judicial interpretation that looks to the thinking of these "founding fathers" as the decisive factor in present-day readings of the U.S. Constitution, and to determine how rights are accorded, or not accorded, to American citizens.
While it is difficult, if not virtually impossible, to glean the thinking of men who lived over 200 years ago, the additional problem is how to apply their Eighteenth Century ideas to people living in the Twenty-First Century.
Who were the founders?
Who were the framers of the American constitutional republic?
How is it possible that there are perhaps tens of millions of Americans, who go through the public (or even private) educational system, graduate from high school, read the daily papers, watch the evening news shows, and have nothing more than a smattering of myths about the lives, thoughts, and outlooks of the men they revere as 'the founders'?
By 'the founders,' or 'the framers,' we mean the men who assembled at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia from May to June 1787, or those who wanted to establish an independent nation, free from the domination of the British Crown.
In Jerry Fresia's "Toward an American Revolution" (South End Press, 1988) these little known figures are revealed. Here are some of them:
Pierce Butler (South Carolina): He enslaved thirty-one human beings. He also was a stockholder and director of the first United States bank. He felt that no congressional representatives should be directly elected by the people, that the Senate ought to represent property, and that slavery ought to be protected ....
John Dickinson (Delaware): He ... helped create Bank of Pa. He believed that "a representative of the people is appointed to think for and not with his constituents." And later as a member of Congress "he showed a total disregard to the opinions of his constituents when opposed to the matured decisions of his own mind."
Nathaniel Gorman (Massachusetts): He was a successful merchant who was involved in land speculation on a large scale. He expressed what was then the general attitude about the one chamber that was popularly elected (given the restricted franchise) when he said , "All agree that a check on the legislative branch is necessary." He was sympathetic to monarchy and during the Convention secretly wrote to European royalty in hope of involving someone with royal blood in governing the United States.
William Samuel Johnson (Connecticut): He was a wealthy and successful lawyer and graduate of Yale who refused to help in the War of Independence because he could not "conscientiously" take up arms against England. Clinton Rossiter desribes him as "the nearest thing to an aristocrat in mind and manner that Connecticut had managed to produce in its 150 years." He was one of the few northerners at the Convention who simply did not worry about slavery or the slave trade .... (Fresia, pp. 14-17)
And that's just four of the 35 men we have come to revere as the "The Framers." They were rich, white lawyers, merchants, monarchists, and slave- owners who, in the words of one Framer, James Madison, wanted to create a system that would prevent most of the people from "discovering their own strength" for fear that they would act "in union with each other." (Madison, called the "Father" of the Constitution, owned 116 men, women and children held in perpetual bondage). Frescia's little-known work should be required reading in every 5th grade classroom in the country.
They feared, despised, and had contempt for the common (white) people, and built a structure that protected wealth, property, slavery and privilege.
It's time we found out who the 'founders' were. Really.
Text © copyright 2001 by Mumia Abu-Jamal.
All rights reserved.
Reprinted by permission of the author.International Action Center
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