James Otis’s Moment of Moral Clarity
In this episode of the Possibility-Action Network, we return to the question that once shook the conscience of the colonies: Is it right to enslave a man because he is black? James Otis asked that question with moral clarity. If liberty is a natural right, how can slavery ever be right? His idea began to shake the foundations of a nation that claimed freedom as its creed.
We step into late 1700s America, a paradise for slaveholders, where the law protected slavery. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 promised free territory but allowed the removal of runaways. The U.S. Constitution promised liberty while securing slavery’s survival. And in 1793, the Fugitive Slave Act showed the national government would enforce removal. For many, the creed of freedom sounded hollow. The truth of the creed and the reality on the ground were far apart.
Slavery was global, and when we widen the lens, cracks began to open. In England, James Somerset was taken there by Charles Stewart. The case reached Lord Mansfield, who ruled that English law did not support slavery. Somerset walked free. Americans watched. From those ideas arose a principle carried across the Atlantic: once free, always free.
The idea was tested in Mississippi, where Harry and others challenged bondage in the Decker and Hopkins cases. In Kentucky, Lydia and Rankin fought it out in court. Each case revealed a contest: the American creed on one side, the supporters of human exploitation on the other. The outcomes were uneven, but the arc of the universe bent, slowly, toward justice.
Who is included when we say the words “all are created equal?” The American creed calls us to possibility, to optimism, and to moral courage. This episode invites us to stand again in that place of clarity and ask a necessary question: Is it right?
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I grew up in a rural community in South Carolina. My father was a general laborer, and he, along with my mother and their eight children, were sharecroppers. I am their sixth child, and I spent my formative years picking cotton and plowing with a mule. I gained a burst of insight when I was 15 years old from an internal consciousness that told him I could do better with his life. I heeded the inspiration and enrolled in college, graduating with honors. I earned a Master of Arts from The Ohio State University and a doctorate from Miami University (Ohio). I received a Golieb post-doctoral fellowship from the New York University School of Law, where I enrolled in the first-year curriculum and the Legal History Seminar. I began teaching at Wilberforce University in Ohio. I also taught at the University of Cincinnati and was a long-time constitutional history professor at North Carolina State University. I was the inaugural director of the African American Studies Program at Mississippi State University. I have lectured and presented scholarly papers in the United States, Canada, and Europe. I presented at the American Society of Legal History, the British Legal History Association, the Southern Historical Association, and the Association of African American Life and History. I have lectured at the University of Washington, Cambridge University, and Keele University in the United Kingdom. My scholarly endeavors have taken me to three African countries, including Ghana, where the University of Ghana boasts an African Studies program.
As a speaker and workshop facilitator, I presented “Four Elements of Progressive Constitutionalism” in the Amicus Curiae Lecture series at Marshall University (2012); “Abraham Lincoln and Executive War Powers,” Wilmington College (2013); “Reconstruction and the Politics of Expedience,” Old Capitol Museum in Jackson, MS (2015); and facilitated teachers at summer seminars for the National Endowment for the Humanities at Georgia State University in 2016 and 2018.
Now retired from academic work, I am the founder of The Possibility-Action Network and host of The Possibility-Action Network Podcast. I am a speaker, transformational coach, and social entrepreneur.
