The first one to raise my hackles was a guy by the name of Michael Coard, a black Philadelphia lawyer and activist who’s part of a group called ATAC -- Avenging the Ancestors Coalition.

I was in Philadelphia last week as for the annual meeting of the Trotter Group, an organization of black columnists named for activist and journalist William Monroe Trotter. We gather for two or three days and listen to a lot of people give us some fantastic information. And, to give Coard his props, he was no exception.

When Coard and other Philadelphia blacks learned that President Washington brought nine of his slaves from Virginia to live with him in the Executive Mansion -- the nation’s precursor of the White House -- they swung into action. They wanted the National Park Service to erect a monument to those slaves at the site of the Executive Mansion.

And that’s a good thing. Coard, ATAC members and other groups and activists in Philadelphia should be commended. But after telling the Trotters all that, Coard gave me what amounted to a cringe-inducing moment.

“For the first time,” Coard boldly announced, “the federal government has not only acknowledged slavery, but has done something about it.”

That’s simply not accurate. The federal government most certainly has acknowledged slavery, It happened way back in 1865 -- long before Coard was born, so he may be forgiven for not remembering this -- when President Lincoln gave his second inaugural address.

(The 13th Amendment that ended chattel slavery, the 14th Amendment that gave ex-slaves citizenship and the 15th Amendment that gave male ex-slaves the right to vote would qualify as the “doing something about slavery” part.)

I’ll spare you the details of what Lincoln said in that speech, but I will mention that Frederick Douglass -- who was one of the actual slaves at one time -- thought quite highly of it. And if Lincoln’s second inaugural address was good enough for old Fred Douglass, it’s darn sure good enough for Michael Coard.

The second one to raise my hackles was Ted Shaw, the executive director of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, who talked to the Trotters later that night. One thing Shaw said repeatedly was that black liberals shouldn’t concede “ownership” of the principle of personal responsibility to conservatives of any color.

I’ve got a hot newsflash for Shaw: black conservatives already own the principle. We’re the first ones to say black folks need to focus more on it and have been ‘buked, scorned and treated like Ton Ton Macoutes by other black folks for saying it.

The fact is, Shaw didn’t even find the words “personal responsibility” until three years ago when Bill Cosby gave his now either famous or infamous -- please take your pick -- speech in Washington, D.C. Shaw was in attendance when Cosby gave that speech.

Some advice for Shaw: Don’t hate on black conservatives just because you got called out, chumped and clowned by a comedian.

Harvard Law School professor Charles Ogletree spoke to the Trotters the last night of the meeting, but he didn’t raise my hackles. In fact, Ogletree’s speech was downright enlightening. He revealed things about Supreme Court justices Thurgood Marshall and William Brennan that conservatives have suspected for a long time.

Hailing Marshall and Brennan as true liberals on the court, Ogletree admitted that both men thought some parts of the Constitution were “fundamentally wrong” and made their decisions accordingly. The death penalty, for instance, is perfectly constitutional (Death penalty opponents don’t know this, but Ogletree does.).

Marshall and Brennan thought the death penalty was immoral and voted against it every chance they could because, according to Ogletree, they believed the Constitution was a “living document” that should evolve over time.

That’s about as classic a definition of judicial activist justices that I’ve ever heard. There is a process for changing the Constitution, though Marshall and Brennan clearly acted as though they never heard of it. It’s called “amending.” That’s happened 28 times. And if it weren’t for the amendments numbered 13, 14 and 15, it’s unlikely that Marshall ever would have sat on the court.

Think of how Ogletree would feel about a Supreme Court justice who felt capital punishment was a moral imperative and who voted to strike down a law in states where capital punishment was banned. I have a hunch Ogletree wouldn’t like it at all.

As a staunch conservative and one of the ever-dwindling number of federalists in the country, neither would I.