Inlay

Profile

Went to some colleges, now studying them for a living Talk equally about ed policy and reality tv She/Her Personal account https://www.dominiquebaker.com/ (I generally don't follow students as they deserve space to blow off steam about people like me)

Dominique Baker

Indigenous people registered assent via signing treaties with the US like the Muskogee people. This treaty signed in 1790, guaranteed the Nation's borders +land title. Alliances with the US were another sign of Native ascent to constitutional arrangements. Dissent however was also widespread. 9/

Some Native people "voted with their feet" by leaving US territory for British Canada. Others countered US incursions with violence. Ablavsky and Allread write, "Natives’ armed resistance was a legal argument of its own, a rejection of the blandishments of the U.S. & its pretensions to rule." /10

12h

Forten wrote in 1813 that these laws would be a pretext for white people to surveil, harass, and racially profile Black Americans. Authorities could "apprehend any black, either vagrant or a man of reputable character, who cannot produce a Certificate that has been registered." 4/

Forten, a patriot and abolitionist, was arguing that these restriction state migration laws were impeding freedom of mobility and settlement and African Americans would disproportionately bear the brunt of enforcement regardless of their circumstances. Forten is not a federal judge. 5/

12h

Yet he argues eloquently & forcefully for civil liberties and privacy for all African Americans. He is articulating a different interpretation of the Constitution and state laws that judges, legislators may have had. He is rightly considered a founder, not just the wigged white men we all know. 6/

Although not invited by the Americans to ratify the Constitution, early republic officials needed the consent of Native nations to constitutional arrangements. Native people did register their views, though not in a ratification process of the settlers. 8/

12h

Native Americans, although not party to the Treaty of Paris ending the Revolutionary War, also had thoughts about the Constitution & its ratification although they were not formally consulted. Legal historians Ablavsky and Allread detail how Native peoples debated the Constitution. 7/

12h

Here's Migration & the Origins of American Citizenship from which this thread is drawn from. Thanks, all who bought/borrowed/read.

12h

Anna O. Law

Me: I am very practical and levelheaded Also me, a minute ago: based on the colorways of this butterfly that just landed on me, I think I'm getting a job offer at [redacted] this year?