Slavery and the Constitutional Convention

Why did the framers of the U.S. Constitution include several protections for slavery in one of our cherished founding documents? Using clips from the documentary series Confounding Father: A Contrarian View of the U.S. Constitution, scholars will discuss the 1787 debates, compromises that led to the protections, and present-day controversies over how we teach this subject.

Moderator: Richard Hall is the Director and Co-Producer of the four-part series, Confounding Father: A Contrarian View of the U.S. Constitution (2020). Recently retired after a thirty year career with C-SPAN, he spent the final eleven years working as a video journalist with American History TV where he conceived and produced the weekly archival film series Reel America, and created over 200 episodes of the documentary series American Artifacts. He is now an independent filmmaker living in Silver Spring, Maryland, and is also the director and co-producer of American Feud: A History of Conservatives & Liberals (2017).

Panelists: Paul Finkelman is the president of Gratz College in greater Philadelphia. He is the author of Slavery and the Founders: Race and Liberty in the Age of Jefferson, and Supreme Injustice: Slavery in the Nation’s Highest Court, and more than 200 scholarly articles—including three for the National Archives magazine Prologue. He is the author or editor of more than 50 books in a wide variety of areas including American legal history, U.S. Constitutional law, American slavery, the First Amendment, the history of the Second Amendment, American Jewish history, civil rights, and legal issues surrounding American sports. His work has been cited in four decisions by the United States Supreme Court, numerous other courts, and in many appellate briefs.

Gloria Browne-Marshall is a Professor of Constitutional Law at John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY). She is a civil rights attorney who litigated cases for Southern Poverty Law Center in Alabama, Community Legal Services in Philadelphia, and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Inc.. Professor Browne-Marshall is the author of many articles and books including She Took Justice: The Black Woman, Law, and Power, The Voting Rights War: The NAACP and the Ongoing Struggle for Justice, The Constitution: Major Cases and Conflicts and Race, Law, and American Society: 1607 to Present

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