“Dred Scott connected four ideas: race, status, citizenship, and community. It connected race to status by arguing that blacks were necessarily and properly of lower status-and that whites should enjoy higher status because of their respective races; indeed, it assumed that blacks could be enslaved because of their race. It connected race to citizenship by arguing that by virtue of their race blacks could never be citizens. It connected race to community by associating the people of the United States with its citizens, so that those who could not be citizens were forever outside the political community: "The question before us is, whether the class of persons described in the plea in abatement compose a portion of this people, and are constituent members of this sovereignty? We think they are not, and that they are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word 'citizens' in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States”, Jack M. Balkin y Sandford Levinson, “13 ways of looking at Dred Scott”, en Yale Law School, Paper 229 (2007), 53-54.
69 En 1819, los territorios de Louisiana y Missouri solicitaron al Congreso su reconocimiento e incorporación a los Estados Unidos como estados esclavistas. Esto preocupó a los representantes de los estados libres (aquellos donde no existía el sistema de producción esclavista), ya que su admisión rompería el equilibrio en la representación en el Senado entre los delegados de los estados libres y esclavistas. Tras un intenso debate, se decidió admitir a Missouri a condición de que la esclavitud quedara prohibida al norte de una línea que cruzaba todo el territorio del país a la altura del paralelo 36° 30’ (el Compromiso de Missouri), pero la incorporación de nuevos estados pronto rompió ese “equilibrio”: en 1830, 12 de 24 estados eran esclavistas, pero hacia 1860 lo eran 15 de 33.
70 Paul Finkelman, Dred Scott v. Sandford: A Brief History with Documents (Boston: Bedford, 1997), 1-4.
71 John S. Vishneski III, “What the court decided in Dred Scott vs. Sandford”, American Journal of Legal History, n° 32, (Oct 1988), 373–390.
72 Según el autor, su investigación intentó “to meet the need, which has become increasingly evident in recent years, of depicting in realistic terms the response of the American Negro to his bondage. The data herein presented make necessary the revision of the generally accepted notion that his response was one of passivity and docility. The evidence, on the contrary, points to the conclusion that discontent and rebelliousness were not only exceedingly common, but indeed characteristic of American Negro Slaves”. Herbert Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts, 6th Ed. (USA: International Publishers, 1993), 374.
73 Manning Marable, The Great Wells of Democracy, op. cit., 38.
74 Molefi Kete Asante está en desacuerdo con la denominación de “nacionalista negro” de Marable para caracterizar a Delany. Según Asante, “Delany was not a Black Nationalist. There was neither a black nation nor a black country that he found to which he attached himself. To Delany there were only the African people recently freed from 246 years of bondage who needed to be elevated. Thus, the label “Black Nationalist” serves to belittle Delany’s intellectual and activist philosophy, to consign him to a marginal space, and to defeat the attempt at selfdetermination and independence. (…) Delany was a transformatist…. If one reads his books and essays one finds throughout his writings that he was advancing a theory of African liberation based on a commitment to selfdefinition, sacrifice, and the willingness to be bold enough to create one’s own world. (…) He was a campaigner for transforming identity and creating within the oppressed, that happened to be largely black, a response based on self-determination”. Molefi Kete Asante, “Martin Delany: The First Transformatist”, ponencia en Temple University, 9 May 2012, http://stillfamily.library.temple.edu/historical-perspective/martin-delany-first-transforma(consultado en 13 ene 2016).
75 Eric Foner, A Short History of Reconstruction (New York: Harper and Row, 1990), xvi.
76 “1. Ni en los Estados Unidos ni en ningún lugar sujeto a su jurisdicción habrá esclavitud ni trabajo forzado, excepto como castigo de un delito del que el responsable haya quedado debidamente convicto. 2. El Congreso estará facultado para hacer cumplir este artículo por medio de leyes apropiadas”. “Constitution of the United States: Amendments 11-27”, The Charters of Freedom, U.S. National Archives & Records Administration: http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_amendments_11-27.html (consultado en 20 Jun 2015).
77 La Enmienda XIV (9 de julio de 1868) había proclamado que las personas nacidas o naturalizadas en el país, y sometidas a su jurisdicción, son ciudadanos de los Estados Unidos y de los estados en que residen. Determinó además que ningún estado podría dictar ni dar efecto a ley alguna que limite los derechos de los ciudadanos, o negarles la protección igualitaria de las leyes. La Enmienda XV (3 de febrero de 1870) estableció que ningún estado o el gobierno federal podría desconocer ni menoscabar el derecho de sufragio de los ciudadanos de los Estados Unidos por motivo de raza, color o previa condición de esclavitud. The Charters of Freedom, op. cit.
78 W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880 (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1935), 357-58, The Internet Archives: https://archive.org/details/blackreconstruc00dubo (consultado en 10 Ene 2013).
79 “the white group of laborers, while they received a low wage, were compensated in part by a sort of public and psychological wage. They were given public deference and tides of courtesy because they were white. They were admitted freely with all classes of white people to public functions, public parks, and the best schools. The police were drawn from their ranks, and the courts, dependent upon their votes, treated them with such leniency as to encourage lawlessness. Their vote selected public officials, and while this had small effect upon the economic situation; it had great effect upon their personal treatment and the deference shown them. White schoolhouses were the best in the community, and conspicuously placed, and they cost anywhere from twice to ten times as much per capita as the colored schools. The newspapers specialized on news that flattered the poor whites and almost utterly ignored the Negro except in crime and ridicule… in the same way, the Negro was subject to public insult; was afraid of mobs; was liable to the jibes of children and the unreasoning fears of white women; and was compelled almost continuously to submit to various badges of inferiority. The result of this was that the wages of both classes could be kept low, the whites fearing to be supplanted by Negro labor, the Negroes always being threatened by the substitution of white labor”. Ídem, 700-701.
80 W.E.B. Du Bois, “Dusk of Dawn: An Essay toward an Autobiography of a Race Concept” (1968), 103, en Dan S. Green y Earl Smith, “W.E.B. Du Bois and the Concepts of Race and Class”, Phylon (44), No. 4; fourth Qtr. (1983), 262-272.
