From Vera Institute of Justice:
Independence Day is a celebration of “freedom.” A day filled with barbecues, fireworks, and red, white, and blue. But the reality is more grim, because not everyone in this country shares the “independence” we commemorate on this day
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In 1852, Frederick Douglass delivered an address in which he asked:
What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.
Sadly, 245 years after the United States declared its independence, “freedom” remains inaccessible for many Black and brown people, including immigrants, in this country. This injustice—the facade of freedom for all—pervades our history, from the displacement and persecution of Indigenous people, to slavery, to Reconstruction Era laws that effectively continued to enslave Black people, to mass incarceration today. The Declaration of Independence was written by and for white men, actively excluding Black people, Indigenous people, women, and others. This nation’s founding fathers deprived others of the rights they bestowed on themselves. Continue reading >>>
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