Nikole Hannah Jones challenges the rooted idea that democracy in America is thanks solely to the founding fathers. Jones effectively illustrates the inhuman passage black people had to face coming to America during the Middle Passage, against their will. Thanks to the enslaved black people, America grew valuable and profitable crops like cotton and “transformed lands” which benefited greatly to the growth and expansion of America. From the profits America received from the labor of black people, they were able to be debt-free paving the way for capitalism to flourish. Jones argues that America’s success was not possible because the founding fathers were a good team but because they abused and forced black people into harsh labor and to fight their battles for them.
Jones uses Crispus Attucks death to further her point that “America wasn’t a democracy, until Black people made it one”, explaining that his death allowed other people to enjoy freedoms and liberties that his own couldn’t, he was a martyr for America. It put the start of the American Revolution into a new perspective for me, the purpose of the revolution was to gain independence from Britain yet they were doing the same thing to people, holding their independence, freedom, and liberty hostage. The fact that one of the first people to die for America’s independence did not even have independence is unjust.
This reading is exposing the reality that America is portraying a false narrative of the truth. There is still racism, prejudice, and discrimination in this country, trying to overlook the historical reality of the root of these issues is unscrupulous. Many Americans are ignorant of the full truth of the democracy of America, their patriotism and even nationalism are founded on the abuse of black people. This article makes me wonder what other important historical information is being watered down?
I really like the way you frame the essay in your first sentence—clearly, there is more to America’s founding than the Founders, and the role of African Americans in making American democracy a reality has gone under appreciated and under studied, especially in the early period (Btw, if you haven’t already chosen a secondary source or paper topic, there has been some great work on free Black citizenship in Early America in the last few years).
That said, it strikes me that Hannah-Jones’s essay isn’t really about Black people’s contributions to American democracy, a subject she spends little time on. Rather, she focuses on the many injustices Black people have faced in America since before the Founding, beginning with the importation of enslaved people to Virginia in 1619. How does her essay, and the Project overall, attempt to reframe this as an alternative understanding of America’s “founding”?