This July Fourth, for the 245th time, America will celebrate independence from British rule. But after President Joe Biden signed into law Juneteenth as a federal holiday, Americans are also forced to take a closer look at what this July Fourth represents.
More than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, and two months after the end of the Civil War, enslaved African Americans in Texas found out they were free on June 19, 1865. The day has since been christened “Juneteenth,” also known as Freedom Day, Jubilee Day, Liberation Day and Emancipation Day.
With two wildly different — yet celebratory — liberation narratives about independence, Americans must reconcile her founding ideals with their spotty lived reality.
Frederick Douglass called America out on its hypocrisy more than a century and a half ago, in his 1852 speech, “What, to the slave, is the Fourth of July?” In it, Douglass stated that a country in the throes of slavery must close its yawning gap between the principles of the United States and the violence and trauma this country inflicted on Black people. His words still resonate today.
“What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence. ... I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us,” wrote Douglass. “This Fourth of July is yours, not mine.”
Yet despite the unequal treatment of African Americans in the United States, Black patriotism shines across the pages of U.S. history. African Americans fought in a segregated military in every war defending this country until 1948. Crispus Attucks, a brother of African and Native American ancestry from Framingham, was the first martyr for America’s independence in the American Revolution. Prince Estabrook, an enslaved man from Lexington and a Black Minuteman, was wounded in the Revolution’s first battle.
Enslaved Africans who fought for the British, called Black Loyalists, were ensured their freedom after the war. Enslaved Africans who fought for the United States, sadly, were not.
But Black patriotism has been exhibited not just on the battlefields of America’s wars but also in demands for equality in her streets and arenas. San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, for example, began to protest police brutality against Black Americans and other forms of social injustice by taking a knee during the national anthem in 2016.
His actions were condemned as polarizing, un-American and unpatriotic. Former President Donald Trump stoked the flames, criticizing Kaepernick and his allies and labeling them as anti-the American flag, cops and the military.
In response came an outpouring of defense, celebrating Black Americans’ history of protest. Former Attorney General Eric Holder tweeted with a photo of Martin Luther King, Jr., down on his left knee in Selma, Ala, in 1965. Holder added, “Taking a knee is not without precedent, Mr. President. Those who dared to protest have helped bring positive change.” As King said in his Montgomery Bus Boycott speech on December 5, 1955, “The great glory of American democracy is the right to protest for right.”
The controversy of taking a knee during the singing of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” America's beloved national anthem, brought heightened attention to the song’s racist history. Francis Scott Key, who penned the lyrics, supported slavery and came from an influential plantation family in Maryland. The song’s third verse, no longer sung after the Civil War, included the lyrics, “No refuge could save the hireling and slave/From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave.”
When patriotism is narrowly defined, it can only be accepted and exhibited within the constraints of its own nation’s intolerance.
Acts of patriotism and protest, however, have yet to accomplish ultimate goals of equality and freedom from oppression. In depicting the mangling grip of white supremacist domestic terrorism on Black lives, Malcolm X in 1965 said, “That’s not a chip on my shoulder. That’s your foot on my neck.” Last year, the world saw a 9 minute and 29 second video of former Minnesota Police officer Derek Chauvin’s murder of George Floyd — with his knee on Floyd’s neck. Floyd handcuffed, lying face down, saying, “I can’t breathe,” went limp. Chauvin was sentenced to 22 and a half years in prison last week. The ongoing struggle against police brutality persists.
This Fourth of July, people will once again sing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” They will once again recite the Pledge of Allegiance, reenact the Continental Congress of 1776 and watch reproductions of the “rockets’ red glare and bombs bursting in air.” America will showcase her indomitable spirit of bravery and patriotism through this ongoing pandemic.
This Fourth, however, will be different from the previous ones. Juneteenth can no longer stand to the side of America’s celebration of independence. The newly recognized federal holiday should encourage Americans to reconsider and expand their ideas of patriotism, what loving one’s country looks like. It highlights how Juneteenth — and Black liberation — is inextricably linked to America's core values of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all Americans.
