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WHAT IS THE FOURTH OF JULY FOR?

June 19, 1999

“When we were the political slaves of King George, and wanted to be free, we called the maxim that: ‘all men are created equal’ a self-evident truth; but now when we have grown fat, and have lost all dread of being slaves ourselves, we have become so greedy to be masters that we call the same maxim ‘a self-evident lie.’ The Fourth of July has not quite dwindled away; it is still a great day for burning fire-crackers!”

—Abraham Lincoln

This Fourth of July, the parks, shores, and play-places of the people will be filled to the brim with tens of millions of Americans who are enjoying their vacation weekend in the hot summer sun. It is truly a holiday, and nothing else. But what does it celebrate?

We are told from our infancy that this date celebrates the blessings of freedom and liberty from oppression. While this claim is repeated year after year, the truths taught us by bitter history reveal a long legacy of oppression, repression, and death. The history of this country is rife with the foul excrescence of racialized human bondage and enslavement. Until the addition of the Thirteenth Amendment, the word “slavery” was absent from the very text of the United States Constitution. Former president, and counsel for The Amistad, John Quincy Adams made that point plain: “The words slave and slavery are studiously excluded from the Constitution; circumlocutions are the fig-leaves under which these parts of the body politic are decently concealed.”²⁰