attention. According to Harry, he has now achieved that ultimate goal, posthumously, and, if I am reading my partner correctly, deservedly. So meager is Harry’s sympathy for Scarborough that I have been left to wonder a few times whether Harry’s hammer is missing from his own toolbox.
Scarborough’s motives, like most things in life, are a question of perception. It was Benjamin Franklin who is reputed to have said that “revolution in the first person is never illegal, as in ‘our revolution.’ It is only in the second person, ‘their revolution,’ that it becomes illegal.” Perspective, being a fine line, involves walking in the shoes of another. Yesterday’s demagogue is tomorrow’s committed leader when his message begins to resonate with the public-and so becomes elevated to today’s political martyr when he is murdered.
We have gathered a number of recent news video clips from an online clipping service and had them burned onto a DVD.
As Scarborough’s image flickers on the screen, it is impossible to deny that he possessed a certain charisma. Six-one and slender, so that dark power suits hung well from his body. Everything about him lent an edge of authority to his argument, from his emerald eyes and sculpted cheekbones to the dapper cleft in his chin. If you turned down the sound and just looked, you might see vestiges of Cary Grant, until you listened to the words.
“What is so insidious, so sinister, is the way in which the nation’s Founding Fathers, people like Madison, Franklin, and Adams, concealed the words of slavery from the public and from history. They slipped the offending language into the Constitution, where it slithered like a hidden serpent through their grand experiment in Democracy,” says Scarborough. “And to this day no one has seen fit to remove those words.
“You can complain about the Bolshevik Revolution and its failure to deliver,” he says. “But there is no deal in history dirtier and more deceptive than the inclusion of slavery in the United States Constitution. What is worse, these offending words are still there, for all to see, there in the organic law of this nation. They may be dead-letter law, no longer enforceable, but they are still visible, AND THEY ARE STILL OFFENSIVE!”
This is the point of Scarborough’s thesis: the manner in which the Constitution is amended. The video we are watching is from a speech he gave in the weeks before he was killed. It was delivered at a university near Chicago while he was on tour for his book Perpetual Slaves. The audience is mostly young, many of them black.
“If you don’t believe that the old Rebel flag of the defeated Confederacy should be hanging outside in front of state capitols in this nation, just beneath the Stars and Stripes, then how is it that the language of slavery should remain visible in the United States Constitution? Is there a different standard for the federal government?” he asks.
“What is so intellectually dishonest is that these ‘great men,’ the minds of the American enlightenment-Adams, Franklin, Madison, and others-dodged the use of plain language when it came to concealing slavery. And nothing has changed. The leaders of this nation continue to dodge it today.
“Look, search, and you will not find the words ‘slave’ or ‘slavery’ anywhere in the Constitution. No, they insult the descendants of slaves, and the national government has seen fit to continue to allow these to exist in print to this very day.
“Look at the infamous fugitive-slave clause, Article Four, Section Two, of the Constitution. This was the cardinal law of slavery crafted at the birth of the nation, the provision that crushed even the shadow of a dream of freedom for African slaves. And did it use the words ‘slave’ or ‘slavery’? No, of course not.
“It uses the euphemism ‘No person held to service or labor’ who escaped to a free state was to be freed. Why? Because the Constitution at its inception says that they should be dragged back and delivered up not to their ‘masters’ or ‘owners’ but to ‘the party to whom service or labor may be due.’
“And have these words been removed from the Constitution?” Scarborough puts a hand up to his ear and listens.
Some in the audience shout, “NO!”
“That’s right. The language is still there, a monument to the guile and craftiness of the slave owners who crafted our Constitution.
“Read Article One, Section Two, the insidious three-fifths clause, and tell me what it means or, more important, WHY IT IS STILL THERE. The continued appearance of these words is a national offense, an insult to every African American walking on this continent.
“Historians know what it means, because they study it. Lawyers know what it means. The federal courts know what it means, because they enforced it. Congress knows what it means, because they passed the enabling statutes that allowed the institution of slavery to function. And Congress has done nothing in more than a hundred and fifty years, since the Civil War and the repeal of slavery by the Thirteenth Amendment, to remove the offending words from the Constitution. Members of Congress sit there and complain about the Dixie flag, and the states that fly it, while they have this stink on their own hands,” says Scarborough. He allows the fiery oratory to settle on the audience.
“In simple terms the three-fifths clause identifies all the classes of people in the United States at the time of its founding. They needed this for purposes of taxation and apportionment, the formula to determine the number of representatives each state would get in the new Congress.
“The clause identifies ‘free persons.’
“It identifies ‘Indians.’
“It identifies ‘those bound to service for a term of years,’ indentured servants and debtors working off their debts.
“And then, last and certainly least, the clause identifies ‘three-fifths of all other persons’ then remaining in the new United States of America.”
Scarborough allows this to settle for a moment.
“Now, who do you think these ‘other persons’ were? Who could they so conveniently and easily carve up into three-fifths of a human being, like a turkey on a platter?
“Who could it possibly be that these enlightened men of the founding generation were talking about?”
“African slaves!” The words are shouted by someone out in the audience.
“That’s right, African slaves. ‘Other people’ who weren’t treated as people at all, because they were owned by white Americans as property, traded and sold like animals. They were being counted as three-fifths of a human being not so that they could vote for members of Congress but so that their owners, their white masters, could have the power of this franchise added to their own. White slave owners could increase the power of their own vote by buying more slaves. This was the incentive, the inducement carved into the cornerstone of the Constitution at the nation’s founding-AND THESE WORDS ARE STILL THERE!” Scarborough pounds on the podium with this, his theme. “Read the book,” he says.
The chant of “Take it out…Take it out…Take it out” starts to rumble through the audience.
He may be a writer, but Scarborough knows how to work an audience. He is a firebrand. Whether you like him or not, I would be willing to take bets that at this moment he is not pretending. This is an issue in which he clearly believes. He allows the chant to continue for twenty or thirty seconds before he cuts it off with his hands in the air.
“Read Article One, Section Nine, of the Constitution, where it says, ‘The migration or importation of SUCH PERSONS’”-he holds up his hand and shakes his finger to emphasize the words-“would not be prohibited by Congress but by the various states then existing. Were they talking about people who wanted to migrate here from Norway or France? NO! So who were they talking about?”
“African slaves!” Now it comes back automatically from the audience, more voices and much louder.
“Yes! They were talking about African slaves, using nice words like ‘imported,’ as if they were fine wine or cheese-human beings dragged here in chains, all at the will of the various states.
“Do you believe that these words should be removed from the Constitution and thrown into the dustbin of history?”
“YES!” A crushing chorus from the audience.
“WHEN?”
“NOW!” This is even louder. The speakers from the set we are watching vibrate under the strain.
“Everywhere you look, they concealed the dirty deal by avoiding the words. They wanted to traffic in SLAVES, all right, but they certainly didn’t want to say it, not so that the whole world and posterity would see it in print. And if the avoidance of language is not evidence of their guilt, then I will produce it,” he says.
“The founders will tell you that they tried to end slavery but they were not able. STICK AROUND,” bellows Scarborough, “because I will tell you the truth. The sequel to this book”-he holds up Perpetual Slaves-“Volume Two,
