1.- In Part 7, Article 1, Locate what you think is the most significant passage in the act and unpack it. What does the law declare? What is it attempting to "better order"?

2.-In Part 7, Article 2, What arguments does Felix make in support of his cause?

3.-In Part 7, Article 3, The short introduction to this reading notes that Article I, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution establishes for enslavers three-fifths representation for the people they enslaved, a calculation that derived from the establishment of the enslaved person being three-fifths of a person. What is the significance of the compromise and its role in this founding document of the U.S. government?

4.-In Part 7, Article 4, The Marshall Trilogy refers to three Supreme Court rulings (collectively referred to as Federal Indian Law) issued in 1823, 1831, and 1832, a span of nine years. Chief Justice John Marshall authored all three opinions. Speculate on the power of the Court in shaping what are essentially racial and social policies, given that a handful of justices can serve for decades (an appointment to the Supreme Court, currently, is for life).

5.-In Part 7, Article 5, Why was it important to prohibit enslaved people from being able to read and write?

6.-In Part 7, Article 6, As the introduction states, a model for the Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions was the Declaration of Independence. Locate a passage that appropriates the language of the Declaration of Independence and briefly comment on the effect of reframing it for women's rights.

7.-In Part 7, Article 7, Reread and comment on the passages discussing race in this document. Pay close attention to the phrases "shade of color," "white blood," and "human species." What is being constructed through this document?

8.-In Part 7, Article 8, According to Dred Scott v. Sandford, what is the central problem before the Court?

9.-In Part 7, Article 9, What strikes you most about President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation?

10.-In Part 7, Article 10, What does the Thirteenth Amendment establish? What does the Fourteenth Amendment establish? What does the Fifteenth Amendment establish?

11.-In Part 7, Article 11, Structural racism created and maintained within the U.S. legal system makes it impossible to view the South Carolina Black Codes (1865) as individual or isolated acts of racism. Find one example in the Black Codes and comment on how it reveals structural racism.

12.-In Part 7, Article 12, How did the Supreme Court rule in Bradwell v. Illinois (1873)? How did the Supreme Court justify its ruling?

References summary:

1. An Act for the Better Ordering and Governing of Negroes and Slaves (South Carolina, 1712) (p. 497)

In 1712, South Carolina passed this act, which was a comprehensive measure that served as a model for slave codes in the South.

2. The Petition of the Africans, Living in Boston (1773) (p. 502)

This public protest against slavery demonstrates Black resistance to enslavement in the colonial period and is an important reminder that enslaved persons have always resisted slavery through a range of methods, including writing.

3. United States Constitution: Slavery Provisions (1787) (p. 504)

The delegates to the Constitutional Convention did address the presence of slavery, but without once using the word "slavery" in the slavery-related provisions in the originally adopted Constitution. These provisions included protection of the international slave trade, a fugitive slave law, and the "three-fifths" compromise, which counted each enslaved American as three-fifths of a person for purposes of calculating both congressional representation and taxes.

4. Marshall Trilogy (1823, 1831, 1832) (p. 505)

The Marshall Trilogy is the set of rulings decided under Chief Justice Marshall that to this day form the basis of federal Indian law. The rulings are complex and contested, and Marshall himself changed his views over the nine years of the trilogy.

5. An Act to Prevent All Persons from Teaching Slaves to Read or Write, the Use of Figures Excepted (North Carolina, 1830) (p. 511)

Most states passed laws prohibiting anyone from teaching enslaved people to read or write in order to control them and keep them from reading abolitionist newspapers or forging passes to escape to freedom.

6. Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions, Seneca Falls Convention (1848) (p. 512)

The Declaration of Sentiments, adopted in July 1848 at Seneca Falls, New York, at the first women's rights convention, is the most famous document in the history of feminism. Like its model, the Declaration of Independence, it contains a bill of particulars. After the passage of the resolutions (all unanimously passed, except the one calling for women's suffrage, which did pass nevertheless), this document inaugurated the women's suffrage movement in the United States.

7. People v. Hall (California, 1854) (p. 516)

Bias against Chinese and "colored races" was endemic in nineteenth-century California, but perhaps no single document so well demonstrates that bias as this majority opinion handed down by the chief justice of the California Supreme Court. At question in this case was whether the testimony of a Chinese person against a white person was admissible in the court, given that the testimony of a "Black, or Mulatto person, or Indian" was not admissible against a white person. The court's opinion was that the design of the law was to protect white people from testimony other than those of the same "white blood."

8. Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) (p. 518)

In this case, the U.S. Supreme Court was asked to decide if Dred Scott, a "Negro" slave, was a citizen of the United States, with all the rights that conferred. The court found that enslaved people could not be considered citizens.

9. The Emancipation Proclamation (1863) (p. 522)

Abraham Lincoln This is the proclamation issued during the Civil War by President Lincoln that freed enslaved people in the Confederate states: "That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free."

10. United States Constitution: Thirteenth (1865), Fourteenth (1868), and Fifteenth (1870) Amendments (p. 524)

This trio of amendments to the U.S. Constitution ultimately granted voting rights and thus citizenship to all men (though not women), regardless of race, therefore making it legal for Black men to vote.

11. South Carolina Black Codes (1865) (p. 526)

The South Carolina Black Codes, passed immediately after ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, is an important primary document revealing the postwar refusal to accept the emancipation of enslaved Americans. South Carolina was the first, but such codes swept the South after the Civil War. These laws sought to reestablish the conditions of slavery by denying free Black people legal rights and criminalizing them through vagrancy laws and other measures that did not apply to white people.

12. Bradwell v. Illinois (1873) (p. 531)

The U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Bradwell v. Illinois, which allowed states to prohibit women from practicing law, offers a concrete example of women's agency and the law's tyranny through the story of Myra Bradwell, who passed the bar exam in 1869 but was denied admission to the bar by the Illinois Supreme Court. Bradwell appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which invoked "divine ordinance" and "the nature of things" to uphold the Illinois court's decision.