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Rohn Hein
Social Justice Author
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Retired Adjunct Prof. Dept. Philosophy & Religion Africana Studies Rutgers U. Camden, Cherry Hill Unitarian Universalist Church member, US Air Force vet
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From his South Jersey home in Cherry Hill — only short miles from Revolutionary War battle sites on both sides of the Delaware River and exactly seven miles from Independence Hall in Philadelphia — Brother Rohn Hein has crafted a refreshingly unique historical fictional account of the informal discussions in taverns, at dinners and in sit down formal debates at the 1st and 2nd Continental Congresses. What’s unique is found immediately in the title of Rohn’s work “The Valet’s Witness” where the black slave servants — of famed and obscure white delegates from the 13 colonies, then states gathered to hammer out the framing values and practicalities of our republic — consistently and skillfully found time from their slave chores to engaged in their own informed … via the black regional grapevine and listening attentively to white reps as they pondered daily over advances and set backs … Pompey, Edward Routlege’s key slave he stationed with him in Philly was a master in studying his master’s thinking and mood swings. He and several of his black peers justifiably became increasingly suspicious with the realization that the majority of the white framers actually were in favor of black enslavement even hypocritically so while being very clear about about the value that black subjugation brought to the pursuit of white happiness and wealth. The Routlege brothers slave reliant delegates of South Carolina were centered as Rohn’s voices of white patriotic hope for a conservative white English style democracy (minus a king) and revolutionary change in politics but not in predatory capitalist politics and economic successes based on black slave labor; Native colonization, land theft even in the restrictions of the Northwest Territories; the general repression of non-citizen people of color and disenfranchised women. I am grateful that Ron dug deep into the archives and research about not just the white framers of this republic. He has actually opened a unique and exciting way of reading black Revolutionary era history in Philly in addition to Black Founders like George Washington’s nine slaves brought from Virginia to the early Philly White House; the black sailers and longshoreman at Penn’s landing with news of black revolts and freedom and enslavement in the British Caribbean Islands; the free born, highly literate black religious, professional and business elders, and fraternal organization leaders among whom were Bishops R. Allen and A. Jones. Word! This is an eye opener about the vastly different ways that the still vexing problems of racial freedom, racial democracy, racial capitalism and racial patriotism could have stirred the concerns of unfree and “free” but politically segregated black folk during the Revolutionary period. Philly proud!
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