By Ruth A. Sheets
Believe it or not, 2023 is nearly half over. Wasn’t it just yesterday we were celebrating the new year 2023? Summer ushers in a time of year different from any other in our culture. School is over and kids have time to play, think, read, and do a lot of other things without school requirements shaping their days. There is summer school, but it is and should be very different from programs during the year. Families consider vacations and what they will do if they can afford to take one together. Even if it’s only an illusion, summer means “freedom” to many.
It is totally appropriate that we get to formally celebrate freedom twice as a nation in the summer, Juneteenth and Independence Day. Technically, Juneteenth is a day or two before the solstice, but for most of us, it’s summer. On June 19th, we celebrate when the last of the enslaved people in Texas in the defeated Confederacy were informed that they were free (as they should have been for about 2-and-a-half years since Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. From that point, no one in the South could say they didn’t know that slavery was over. OK, many white southerners “pretended” they didn’t know, but that’s another, very important tale.
Two weeks after Juneteenth, we celebrate Independence Day where We the People (as our Constitution names us) celebrate America’s freedom. That was the day the Declaration of Independence was formally signed by John Hancock, the President of the Continental Congress and the Secretary, Charles Thompson, on behalf of the Congress itself. The members of Congress would have the opportunity to sign the document a month later, but that was not a requirement, it was the members personally committing themselves to the goal of independence for “The United States.”
The Declaration would have been a minor footnote of history had people of all 13 states not stepped up, along with foreign supporters, to drive the British armed forces from those states. The fight lasted until 1783, more than 7 years after the Declaration was signed, and many people died to attain that goal. That is a lot of commitment.
The founding legislators were all white men, but far more than just white men worked to gain American independence. Women of many backgrounds contributed significantly as did Black Americans, and members of several indigenous communities. The French and others from foreign lands helped out too. In short, it was truly a group effort.
Eleven years later when a group of men from all the states sat together in Philadelphia to try to hammer out a constitution to govern what was even at that time, a very mixed group that called itself America, they began the document with “We the People.” They did not write “We the rich, white, Christian, straight, male People.” Some may have been thinking that, but the truth is, they didn’t say it which means “We the People” does include more than that one particular group and over the years, our Constitution has expanded to be more inclusive. For our nation to be truly great, the full diversity of America needs to participate in all aspects of American life, including governing.
There are many right now who want to make the United States a “Christian” nation, Christianity being favored over all other groups. That was definitely not what the founders wanted. Some of the founders were Christian, John Adams, for example, but even he did not want this country to establish Christianity in any of its forms as the religion of America.
Several of the founders, like Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin were Deists who believed in God, not a particular religious understanding of God. Others, like George Washington considered one’s faith to be personal and not to be imposed by anyone on anyone else. If the founders, those sacred men whom contemporary conservatives claim to revere didn’t want an established religion, what makes today’s “Christian nationalists” so determined to make it happen?
White supremacists right now promote fear, fear of “white people being ‘replaced’” in this country. They are, of course, vague as to what that means, but they hang it out here so white Christians, in particular will forget what Jesus taught about loving our neighbor, and will silence, even do harm to those who don’t look like themselves. They don’t want people who don’t live as they do to participate in this society either. Crimes against the LGBTQ community, for example, have increased significantly each year since 2020 when some politicians began targeting members of that community as though they are worthy of being harmed. A large percentage of the people standing against women’s bodily autonomy and the rights of other groups are white “Christian” men, to many, the privileged class. Our current Supreme Court conservatives act as though there is a privilege for white, straight, Christian men and their corporations, and seem to be trying to make our Constitution agree with them.
This Independence Day, we need to re-commit ourselves as a nation to the principles of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” for all Americans, not just a certain set of Americans. We also must remember that the writers of the Constitution wanted us to work to “form a more perfect union.” We don’t have to shift our thinking very much to work for those things. There are have always been people leading the way if we would pay attention. At the time of our Declaration of Independence and Constitution there were people who already stood for equality and knew that slavery was not only wrong, but harmful to this nation, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Benjamin Rush, and probably every Black person in this country enslaved or free among them. It’s too bad a lot of Americans were not listening. Are we paying attention now?
I argue along with many others, that diversity and democracy are what made this nation strong from the time of our Revolution to the present, even though we got off track when it came to people of color and women. We have the tools to do better in shaping our union, again, if we choose to.
We have 2 chances to formally celebrate diversity and democracy this summer: Juneteenth and Independence Day. So, let’s go all out and celebrate FREEDOM! We have an opportunity to concentrate on the many things We the People have in common. But in addition, we must appreciate the contributions We the People make in all our diversity to this nation. Our marvelous diversity can take us all into a brighter future, that is, if we stop allowing ourselves to be overwhelmed by the forces that would rather divide us than unite us. Make these Juneteenth and Independence Day celebrations joyous and vehicles for uniting We the American people.
