Celebrating liberation on the Fourth of July
"Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it"
On July 4th, 1776, after tiering of imperial tyranny, the Continental Congress ratified the Declaration of Independence. While the document is credited most with freeing the 13 colonies, thus creating the United States, it has been a fundamental pillar of broadening freedom and equality throughout the American experience. From the Revolution, to the Civil War, and the centuries long fights for civil rights through today, the Declaration of Independence provides a foundation for fostering liberation.
From 1765 (the year the Stamp Act was enforced) to 1776 the 13 colonies of America began to unite over their shared struggle and organize against their oppressor across the Atlantic. The colonists endured the British military crowding their cities and stealing their food, prompting violent outbursts like the Boston Massacre in 1770, which killed Crispus Attucks, a Black Framingham man whose formerly enslaved parents lived in Natick. Colonists turned their anger into action and formed a body of representatives from each colony to deliberate their plan for countering the British’s aggression. After suffering the many abuses, the colonists agreed to declare independence in early July 1776 . From that point on, the newly fraternized citizens worked to maintain their new nation and defend independence.
While the Revolutionary War ended in 1783 with the Treaty of Paris, securing the United States with independence, the fight for the principles promised in the Declaration of Independence did not. Its first lines read “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” While these 35 words were enshrined on parchment, they were not protected by the new government. Only white, male, property owners had the right to vote while all other races were subjected to deeply discriminatory attitudes or enslavement. From 1776 on, the words of Declaration of Independence were used as a defense by abolitionists. Men like Fredrick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison used “all men are created equal” as a patriotic battle cry for emancipation. While it took decades of strife, culminating in the brutal Civil War, freedom was found with the passage of the 13th Amendment. While the liberation of the enslaved was fostered and won, in part, by the Declaration of Independence, the use of the nations founding document as a weapon of progress continued.
On July 4th, 1876, 100 years after the writing of the declaration, a group of women's suffragists wrote the “Declaration of Rights of the Women of the United States.” Their document mimics the style and format of the 1776 declaration while calling for the extension of the equal rights as promised. The suffragists used the “self evident truth” that “all men are created equal” to pressure legislators to support women's suffrage and equal rights. In 1920, more than 40 years after the Declaration of Rights of the Women of the United States, the 19th Amendment was ratified, securing women the right to vote. Though it proved a long and difficult fight, the Declaration of Independence was again successful in fostering the cycle of liberation to secure women the right to vote.
The 20th century brought with it many other fights for equal rights in America, exhibited most prominently by the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Civil rights leaders used the persuasive opening lines of the Declaration of Independence to foster their renewed battle for liberation. In an iconic letter penned in a Birmingham Alabama jail in 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote:
We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom. Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with the destiny of America. Before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson scratched across the pages of history the majestic word of the Declaration of Independence, we were here.
Months later in his equally iconic “I Have a Dream Speech” Dr. King said:
“When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, Black men as well as White men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Dr. King's words directly associate the destiny and ideals of the United States with the Declaration of Independence. He uses direct quotes as evidence for why Black Americans should be liberated from the oppression they face.
The Declaration of Independence is the most successful civil rights document in our nation's history. It provides the foundation for guaranteeing equality and natural rights for all. Today, 247 after it was written, the Declaration of Independence is still a tool in the fight against oppression. July 4th is as much of a celebration of radical progressivism as it is of the United States.
While calls for reform are derided as radical or un-American by the rightwing extremists that increasingly attempt to withdraw our unalienable rights, we (and they) should reflect on the advice provided by the Declaration of Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, —That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
July 4th is a celebration of revolution—class, racial, sexual, and political—not of an unchanging status quo.