Fireworks are going off all around me. It's the 4th of July! As I reflect upon this holiday, I wonder how many appreciate the significance of its meaning: the signing of the Declaration of Independence. This declaration was a letter to King George; it was a death warrant for all who signed it. Yet, they signed believing in the principles espoused therein, that all men are created equal and entitled to certain inalienable rights, not given to them by man or government but by divine purpose and intention.
I see the many failures and frustrations in our shared history that have caused us to question whether we really stand by these values that have become principles we hold so dear. A recent Fox poll reported that 74% of Americans feel good about this country (Fox, June 2024). I pondered what feeling good about this country means. Is it adherence to principles, has anything to do with principles, or is it all about economics? I wondered how we have succeeded in living up to those principles.
In his 4th of July speech in 1852, Frederick Douglass stated, “America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future.” When our nation consciously permits the existence of contradictions between our lifestyle and our values, our collected future becomes clouded at best and hopeless at worst. We fought a great civil war in this nation; over 680,000 people were killed over this principle: “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.”
Throughout our nation's journey through time, today is much better than that of my father, who grew up in a segregated community where racism and segregation were the laws of the land and where fear of being lynched existed as a fact of life. The America I grew up in had whites-only bathrooms, drinking fountains, and public swimming pools. We swam in creeks and rivers in our small town in Oklahoma. I participated in protest movements of the 60s and witnessed the rights we gained, the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. I saw significant progress and great efforts to establish equality. I'm pleased that things are not the way they were, yet we still have incidents like that of George Floyd, the lack of learning in public education, and the denial that issues of race still exist.
Microaggressive acts focused on ethnic, racial, cultural, or a sense of otherness become sources of bullying, harassment, and discrimination. I think of my daughter, who was trying to connect with her Cherokee heritage and joined a Cherokee-only social media forum. She was told that she was not an actual Cherokee because she didn't know her tribe or the language of the Cherokee Nation. Of course, we don't know our tribe; we were slaves to the Cherokee. We are known now simply as Freedmen. Singling people out as “others” is not limited to white Europeans. But I digress; we must always guard America's founding principles, that all are created equal.
Regarding America and the celebration of the Fourth of July, Frederick Douglass gave his scathing speech and rebuke of America, yet in conclusion, he still had hope. He stated, “I do not despair of this country. . . I... leave off where I began, with hope. . . drawing encouragement from the Declaration of Independence, the great principles it contains, and the genius of American Institutions, my spirit is also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age” (Douglass, 1852).
On this Fourth of July, I am cheered by the changes I have seen in our nation over time. We must continue striving to improve and enlarge our understanding of the Declaration of Independence. We must live up to and beyond the expectations of our founding fathers. Langston Hughes's poem “Let America Be America Again” listed the failures of America, but he also made clear that America must be; it must exist. America is every man and woman's dream: to find a land where you are defined not by rights given by the government but by inalienable rights not established by humankind but by divine intentionality. Langston Hughes described that the existence of America, this dream, this ideal place, must exist and will exist again.
I don't think we fully realize we must train ourselves to be constantly vigilant to manifest this ideal.
Happy 4th of July!
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