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Thoughts on Independence 2021
I have to admit, that in general, I approach the Fourth of July, as a day when I have to be comforting my pets who are fraid of fireworks. But this year, after a recent trip to the Museum of African American History in Washington DC, I am thinking about the celebration of independence differently.
Today, we credit Thomas Jefferson as the primary author of the Declaration of Independance, adoped by the Second Continental Congress on July 4th, 1776. Most every young American school child learns these words:
“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.”
Jefferson owned over 600 slaves. Human beings that he himself considered less than human. These were men and woman, even Jefferson refused to consider as endowed by their creator in the same way White men were. And to be honest, there is a part of me that doesn’t know how to reconcile this.
Recently, I toured the Museum of African American Museum in DC, and one of the exibits that truly haunts me,was one which described the correspondences between Benjamin Benneker,a freed slave, who confronted Jefferson in 1791, when the Bill of Rightswere adopted concerning the discrepencies nd contradictions between the Declaration of Independence and the equality that existed, and would continue through the Civil War. Indeed, Jefferson himself adamantly wrote on multiple occassions that Blacks were inferior. Today, we could only see him as a racist- not the personna I was taught through out my public education.
While a celebation of the 4th may usually focuses on the Declaration itself, this year, I’m thinking about the interactions between Benjamin Banneker and Jefferson, and specifically Banneker’s letters to Jefferson. Real independence comes, in recognizing those voices who speak truth to power, and allowing those voices to inspire us today to keep working towards the more perfect union.
“Sir, I freely and cheerfully acknowledge, that I am of the African race, and in that color which is natural to them of the deepest dye; and it is under a sense of the most profound gratitude to the Supreme Ruler of the Universe, that I now confess to you, that I am not under that state of tyrannical thraldom, and inhuman captivity, to which too many of my brethren are doomed, but that I have abundantly tasted of the fruition of those blessings, which proceed from that free and unequalled liberty with which you are favored; and which, I hope, you will willingly allow you have mercifully received, from the immediate hand of that Being, from whom proceedeth every good and perfect Gift.”
Banneker’s letter to Jefferson.
