Many great points, but still some of the beliefs even you—an “activist” black female American truth tells and scholar— write about,I’ve just learned, are from this falsely sanitized benevolent father white ample myth. From research I’ve been looking at:
First off, Jefferson was not the great writer and thinker of the Declaration. A small group of northern free thinkers and abolitionists plumped our Jefferson to write the declaration, instructing him on key points, including Ben Franklin, who was “partly” Quaker. After Jefferson was done with his draft he handed it over to another Quaker, who believed in Abolition and was influenced enough by the corrections he made he ended up freeing all his slaves. Jefferson was plumped up not for his thinking or philosophy skills, though he was young, freshly back from France and had learned the newest philosophies that included natural or inalienable rights. This key component of inalienable rights though was understood truly by Thomas Paine, the guy Franklin imported from Britain to become the head of Franklin’s printing press. Paine then wrote in 1774 reprinted with additions Common Sense, the single most popular book in US history proportionally until 2008. This is where the key ideas came from.
Jefferson was chosen because he was from Virginia and his daddy was super rich and influential, already the largest slaveholder and property owner (where Jefferson inherited his vast wealth). So he wasn’t the grand thinker, architect and writer. He was savvily propped up to get political buy in from the slave states in the South who would be against “equality” and “inalienable rights” without Jefferson’s name and Southern credo behind it.
Next, Black Americans DID have the right to vote. Even in the South. In 1835 for example, in North Carolina, their legislature voted 66-61 to ELIMINATE the right of black Americans to vote. That is a slim margin when considering the vote was to take away a RIGHT held by blacks.
Yes, a couple caveats. Free Black Americans had the right to vote, not slaves. But still, there were 33,000 free black Americans in North Carolina, and one has to wonder had this vote not happened then and the right of the free black Americans not be taken off the books and stripped away to prevent their vote in 1840, they might have tipped that scale or overcame that margin. Who knows, but just interesting to think about.
Another caveat, it was a total of 9 out of 13 states until then that allowed free blacks to vote. Keep in mind that the northern states didn’t have a lot of free blacks, but they did have them, but by 1840’s they were gaining more free blacks each day who escaped (Fredrick Douglas comes to mind of course who gained his freedom by a daring escape and landing foot in Manhattan to become instantly free and thus able to vote.). So what we’ve even brainwashed on is the idea that “nationally” or federally there was not a right to vote on the books, but state by state they did have the right to vote. Bad history lessons.
Keep in mind as well that Massachusetts had eliminated slavery in 1783, New York State started the wheels turning before 1800 though not fully ending slavery until 1827. Still, most Northern states had ended slavery before 1861, already given the right to vote since start of American to free blacks. And New Jersey gave unmarried and widowed women the right to vote, regardless of color, while Vermont and New Hampshire eliminate property qualification by 1792. Kentucky, after being admitted as a state did for a time have the right of blacks to vote on their books before taking it away.
A lot of whitewashing has made school kids like me and you repeat this myth that only white men who own property could vote until the Civil War, propagating this idea that the wise Abraham Lincoln had so generously granted freedom to black slaves and gave them the votes and citizenship. Totally a lie. Many states allowed blacks to vote, and by the started of the civil war all had ended slavery some decades and decades before, ended property rights as a voting qualification, and even some women had the right to vote.
The White Male Myth, the Generous Father Myth, whatever you want to call it, always make it seem like some white male leader came to a sound moral conclusion and bravely made a stand to do what was right, moral just, for the good of the America: Jefferson wrote the Declaration of equality and inalienable rights (ideas not his, not true as the “sole” wise idealist writer); Washington bravely led the charge for freedom (when president he hunted down one of his house slaves, a teenage girl, by using bounty hunters and Fugitive slave act—she was never caught in New Hampshire where she escaped to and live in a small town of 300 free blacks with her husband (who had the right to vote); Lincoln (all northern states freed blacks already and they had the right to vote all along). Oh, the list goes on.
These horrible myths of the Wise White Man Leader are mostly bunk and propped up nonsense that eliminate the struggle of the people for truth and freedom. Most blacks worked for and deserve credit for creating the pressure to end slavery more than Lincoln. (Fredrick Douglas pressured him directly and the country for 2 decades before). My current hypothesis is that these myths were created post-Civil War to give an idea of white unity to a country that failed to achieve it, as the Northern whites withdrew from the South in 1876, defeated by the racist lynchings.
The worse false fact. Texas wanted the ability talk about “involuntary relocation” because the opposite is actually true. Texas fought for freedom from Mexico because Mexico, like the North, was eliminating slavery, which threatened the whites who had dragged their slaves there, relocating them by force to work “free land.”
Thus, the state was founded solely to protect slavery, and they were the ONLY state that didn’t allow free black Americans to live there. Hence, being kicked out of the state was mandatory, the law, and in their founding documents and beliefs. Most Southern states had free blacks, even Mississippi—a small number for sure but they still had them. Louisiana had black Americans who owned slaves. Texas wanted none of that. They went even “bigger” on slavery than the South and were born with less tolerance than Georgia and Mississippi (zero tolerance in fact—the most extremist state-country—couldn’t stand the idea of a free black in their state at all!). Of course, Texas wants to erase their supreme racist history as the most racist state and make people forget about their quickness to join the confederacy to protect slavery.

This Tucker guy, he’s not woke. Obviously. He’s in a deep coma. I’m beginning to think I’m not nearly woke enough. Having been throughly whitewashed as a child, and I at least as a white had the “luxury” of being born in the North to freethinking professors.

Thanks so much again!