Move Over Michelle and Barack…Here’s America’s FIRST Black ‘Power Couple’
And, just like the Obamas, they were from Chicago
Authors Note: This is the first of a number of posts I will make throughout the month of February in honor of Black History Month. I am calling these scribblings, collectively, “Essays in Black.”
When we study slavery, we do not usually consider northern slavery. After all, slavery was only a southern phenomenon, right?
Wrong.
In the beginning, and for at least one hundred years before the thirteen colonies declared themselves independent of England, slavery was present in each and every one of those original thirteen colonies.
Right up until 1787, slavery was perfectly legal and vigorously practiced in each of the Northwest Territories as well, which, in time, would become the states of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin after passage of the Northwest Ordinance.
Within this vast expanse, and pursuant to the Ordinance, at least three but no more than five states could be and were established. Although the framers of the Constitution could not bring themselves to end slavery throughout the entirety of their fledgling nation-state, they did outlaw the continuation of slavery in the territories which, again over time, became the aforementioned states. This meant that within the freshly minted Northwest Territories, which were still in the process of being “confiscated,” to put it mildly, from the resident inhabitants, slavery was “grandfathered” in as a nod to those wealthy white people who owned slaves at the time of passage of the Ordinance in 1787.
Slavery in Illinois
The enslavement of black people in Illinois has a long and complex history. Slavery was first brought to the Midwest by French explorers, namely, La-Salle, Joliet, and Marquette from the mid- to late 1700s.
Interestingly, each of these “explorers” tried and failed to set up shop at the confluence of the tiny river now known as the Chicago River where it entered…
