The Black Loyalists suffer a double whammy in American history…they supported the losing side in our origin story, and they don’t fit our founding myth that the Declaration of Independence declared all men are created equal and deserve life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Or that we’re the good guys. The Virginia Proclamation is not in the Virginia public school curriculum. Patrick Henry’s speech advocating independence from England, given at St. John’s Church in Richmond, is. 1 "Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!" 2 It is obvious to everyone who hears it that Patrick Henry, a slaveholder, held some cognitive dissonance he probably didn’t even notice. All the slaveowning patriots…George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, et al…believed the same paradox. One man decided to exploit that pa...
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