Republicanism: How Can Blacks Revive a Constitutional Dream
![handle is hein.journals/howlj30 and id is 993 raw text is: Republicanism: How Can Blacks Revive
a Constitutional Dream?
RONALD C. GRIFFIN*
INTRODUCTION
Black Americans have not faired well under republicanism.' His-
tory supports the claim. Blacks were classified as property;2 denied
political participation in the country's affairs;3 subjected to physical
and economic servitude;' confined to segregated housing and second
rate educational systems.5
The social fallout left behind by these events has haunted genera-
tions of Black Americans. Legislation alone will not blow away this
fallout or erase its residual human effects. Social legislation, restruc-
turing our economy, and a new political vision inspired by the Consti-
tution are needed to give people a chance to grasp the good life.
* Ronald C. Griffin is a Professor of Law at Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas.
1. THE FEDERALIST No. 39, at 280 (J. Madison) (B. Wright ed. 1961); ELY, DEMOCRACY
AND DISTRUST 79 (1980). [hereinafter ELY] see also Sherry, Civic Virtue and the Feminine Voice
in ConstitutionalAdjudication, 72 VA. L. REV. 543, 550-562 (1986). [hereinafter Sherry]. Afro-
Americans derived no benefits from republicanism. They played no recorded role nor derived
any benefits from the decision to abandon republicanism for Lockean and Hobbsean ideas about
government. Sherry at 560-562; KOCH, JEFFERSON AND MADISON: THE GREAT COLLABORA-
TION 53-54 (1964); BLAUSTEIN AND ZANGRANDO, CIVIL RIGHTS and THE BLACK AMERICAN:
A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY 41-42 (1970). Many of the schemes discussed in this essay will not
help the Black under-class. Lcamann, Ghettos. What Has to be Done, The Wash. Post Nat'l
Wkly. ed., Sept. 22, 1986, at 29, col. 1. Education, transaction payments to cover the cost of
searching for work, provided over many generations, are the only things likely to help. Leamann
at 29, col. 3.
2. See Somerest v. Stewart, 98 Eng, Rep. 499 (1772); Smith v. Brown and Cooper, 91 Eng.
Rep. 566 (1702). Blackstone wrote an interesting commentary on the subject. Chitty's Black-
stone, Bk. 1, Chap. XIV 423-5 (1908).
3. Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393 (1857).
4. Buchanan v. Warley, 245 U.S. 60 (1917); Shelly v. Kremer, 334 U.S. 1 (1948); Jones v.
Mayer, 392 U.S. 409, 444-469 (1967) (Douglas, J., concurring).
5. Brown v. Bd. of Educ., 347 U.S. 483 (1954).](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/howlj30&div=67&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Republicanism: How Can Blacks Revive a Constitutional Dream
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