College of Political Knowledge

Subject:  Black History/American History

It is Black History Month, where the accomplishments and achievements of Afro-American citizens have had on the country…we celebrate our diversity and our citizens……

Last year I wrote a post about the Father Of The Civil Rights Movement”….Thomas Paine (go to search and type in Paine’s name and read his contribution and why I say that)…..this year I ask which was the first state to issue a abolition act?

Since I find Paine an interesting and forgotten Founder….it plays into the question…..

The answer for those who are not aware of this……it was the state of Pennsylvania…..the Pennsylvania Gradual Abolition of Slavery Act of 1780….and with this act the “preamble”, if you will, was said to be written by Thomas Paine while he was employed by the Pennsylvania Assembly……the “preamble” is as follows:

When we contemplate our abhorrence of that condition to which the arms and tyranny of Great Britain were exerted to reduce us, when we look back on the variety of dangers to which we have been exposed, and how miraculously our wants in many instances have been supplied, and our deliverances wrought, when even hope and human fortitude have become unequal to the conflict, we are unavoidably led to a serious and grateful sense of the manifold blessings, which we have undeservedly received from the hand of that Being from whom every good and perfect gift cometh. Impressed with these ideas, we conceive that it is our duty , and we rejoice that it is in our power to extend a portion of that freedom to others which hath been extended to us, and release from that state of thraldom to which we ourselves were tyrannically doomed, and from which we now have every prospect of being delivered. It is not for us to inquire why in the creation of mankind the inhabitants of several parts of the earth were distinguished by a difference in feature or complexion. It is sufficient to know that all are the work of an Almighty Hand. We find in the distribution of the human species that the most fertile as well as the most barren parts of the earth are inhabited by Men of complexions different from ours and from each other; from whence we may reasonably as well as religiously infer that He who placed them in their various situations, hath extended equally His care and protection to all, and that it becometh not us to counteract His mercies.

Not only was Paine there in the original fight for the emancipation of slaves….but his words were strong and eloquent, just as they were in Common Sense that lead Americans to demand independence…….and the birth of the nation……

Few history books tell the whole story of the fight for freedom for the slaves……take nothing away from people like MLK or Malcolm X or Harriet Tubman or Douglass or any of the champions of freedom for the oppressed…..but in the same vain…take nothing away from those that worked tirelessly with no credit for the work they did……

Granted Thomas Paine is NOT a black person but he did more in the early days of the republic to free the slaves than any other of the Founders and he should be remembered for the work that he did…….