HAPPY 4TH OF JULY!
I hope that on this day, you’re preparing to do whatever it is that makes you happy. Whether it’s traveling to spend time with family and friends, taking a last minute trip to the store to pick up goods for a celebration, or prepping food- Good luck and enjoy! Also, in all of that preparation and celebration, I hope we’ll take a moment to reflect on the meaning of this holiday. All of us.
Independence Day: The Entire Country Wasn’t Free
While we call it Independence Day, the 4th of July cannot just be a celebration of a country’s independence because, of course, the entire country wasn’t free. 170 years ago during a celebration of American Independence, Frederick Douglass, one of America’s most famous and brilliant orators, gave a famous speech in which he asked, “What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July?” If forming a more perfect union was really the goal, Douglass’s query had to be considered. After all, it was 1852 and there were more than three-million enslaved Black people in this country. We could call them African-Americans but the term did not exist at the time and we were not considered Americans.
Liberation
Less than 15 years later, Black people would see the fruits of our centuries-long fight for liberation realized. It would be June of 1865 by the time all of the enslaved Black people would experience liberation. So we celebrate Juneteenth, arguably the holiday that makes American Independence real because America could never be free and independent as long as was dependent upon the enslavement (oppression, torture and death) of millions of people. In that vein, like the Founding Fathers he praised, Douglass was brilliantly ahead of his time when he also asked,
“What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? And am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?”
That’s a question we continue to ask today. That is the sentiment underlying the Black Lives Matter statement. If we are brave enough to look beyond simply how my white friends and family treat me to the broader outcomes of our nation’s reality, can we “confess the benefits… resulting from your independence to us”? The answer is easy and STILL I submit that July 4th is a holiday for people of color and Black people, specifically. Our ancestors fought for it not because America was already perfect but because we expected the nation to live up to that ideal. We continue to fight for that today when we march in the streets, take a knee, vote, serve in public office, and in so many other ways.
Freedom Requires a Specific Truth for All of Us
July 4th, 1776 is the day we adopted the Declaration of Independence. It’s not the day we’re celebrating, however, it’s the ideal of freedom that we celebrate. That ideal wasn’t real in 1776. Let’s remember that today. Let’s remember that freedom isn’t just a word, it’s a lived experience that requires a specific truth for all of us. I can’t really be free if my neighbor isn’t because I am stuck and tied to the need to protect what is mine from that neighbor’s protests. So why not be committed to that neighbor’s liberation which also liberates me? Let THAT be a part of your celebration today, however you celebrate.