Kweku’s Korner
Kweku Amoasi & Noah Smith
By Kweku Amoasi &
Noah Smith
The Declaration of Independence was adopted on July 4, 1776, and “signed on August 2, 1776. The words penned by the founding fathers of this nation were aspirational and unprecedented. They boldly declared “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal and they are endowed by the creator their inalienable rights that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
In 1852, when Frederick Douglass was asked to orate a celebration ceremony for the 76th anniversary of America, he told them this was a glorious day for you, because it is a reminder of the release of British bondage and, on this day, Americans celebrate the fruits of the labor toiled by those great men that created this nation. He then exclaimed, but what is this holiday, this celebration to the slave, who is still in literal bondage? How are they to celebrate freedom, while enslaved by a heavier oppression imposed by the British? If Douglass had been so inclined, he could have added women, immigrants, Indigenous people, and poor white men.
How did the declaration lie? They stated all men were created equal. But they were only talking about White men who owned land. Women, Afrikans, Indigenous people, and poor people were not included. Remember, most states restricted voting to white male property owners.
How did the declaration lie? They stated we had the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Life is defined as the capacity for growth, reproduction, and functional activity. To the Afrikan, who was considered chattel and then promoted to three-fifths of a man, he could not choose where he could eat, live, rest, or shit. Liberty is the state of being free within a society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authorities. Consider how the divinely inspired Manifest Destiny mantra allowed Americans to annex the land of Mexicans and Indigenous people. The pursuit of happiness literally translates to the pursuit of a meaningful life. How can one pursue a meaningful life when they are consistently degraded?
For example, Abigail Adams wrote a letter to her husband John, in 1776, to implore him to “Remember the Ladies.” Although she sat under the protection of a land-owning white male, she felt the sting of oppression and warned of a future uprising from this sector of the country. Women today, though they have made great advances with suffrage movements, still must fight for true equality. The immigrants who stormed to America because she asked for the tired, the poor, and the huddled masses yearning to breathe freedom are now being told to self-deport or be removed abruptly and violently.
No one would argue that America has improved from 1776 to 1852 to today. In some senses, America understood she was not perfect and needed to work toward a more perfect union. She has improved over the past two hundred and forty-nine years. But she must continue to improve and not regress back to her former transgressions. Jefferson knew America needed to self-correct or the great experiment would self-destruct. Along with the preamble he left us this warning “Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just and that his justice cannot sleep forever….”