Thread by @wcaleb

As long as we're all here waiting, let me tell you about James Forten and the long struggle for voting rights in Philadelphia.

Forten was born a free man in PA in 1766. Stood outside the State House to hear the first reading of the Declaration of Independence. Was captured by the British while serving on a patriot privateer in the Revolution. But could he vote in the new republic?

The answer isn't clear. The PA constitution of 1790 technically permitted "every freeman of the age of twenty-one years" who had resided in the state 2 years & paid a tax to vote. No explicit racial barrier. So he's good, right?

He clears the tax bar for sure because did I mention the man went on to own his own sail-making business and invested heavily, employing more than two dozen white men who worked for him? Dude was loaded (comparatively speaking).

But many foreign travelers to the US in Forten's lifetime noted that Black voters didn't seem to make use of the ballot they technically had the right to in eastern PA. A Brit, Edward Abdy, said that "they seldom or never make any use of it in Philadelphia."

One Englishman, Andrew Ball, asked a white Philadelphian in the early 1830s why Black Philadelphians didn't come to the polls as allowed by law. "His answer was significant, 'Just let them try!'"

So did Forten try to vote himself? Hard to say. But here's what he did do circa 1822: made sure those white guys who worked for him went to the polls and VOTED. Total boss move, right?

As for voting himself though ... no clear evidence he did. He might have been prevented by white Andrew Bell called "the mobbish antipathy to the men of colour, which might have been the means of setting the whole country in a flame."

Bell described one episode: "After insulting and cruelly beating numbers of black men in the public places of Philadelphia, & hunting them about like wild beasts every where, one large body went to the quarter of the city principally inhabited by them," & burned & pillaged.

Not long after, a Luzerne County court considered a case where a local election inspector, Hiram Hobbs, had turned away a free Black man, William Fogg, from the polls, saying he was not included in the PA Constitution's meaning of "freeman."

The County court actually ruled in Fogg's favor, but the state supreme court overturned it and sided with Hobbs, the racist election inspector. And then, in 1838, the state constitution was revised to limit the vote to "white" freemen only.

James Forten, Philly patriot, died in 1842, perhaps never having cast a vote in the country for which he had been jailed as a prisoner of war. But not before raising good trouble, like almost singlehandedly keeping abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison's Liberator funded.

And he probably helped bankroll the "Appeal of Forty Thousand Citizens, Threatened with Disfranchisement, to the People of Pennsylvania," in 1838, a pamphlet by Black activists in Philly that made clear, nearly 200 years ago, why voting rights matter. archive.org/details/appeal…

From the Appeal: "When you have taken from an individual his right to vote, you have made the government, in regard to him, a mere despotism; and you have taken a step towards making it a despotism to all."

James. Forten. Read all about him in Julie Winch's biography. You won't regret it. amazon.com/Gentleman-Colo…

^ that's WHAT Andrew Bell called. It's late, OK!

^ That's Andrew BELL. Here's the source: archive.org/details/menand…