Unit 4

Introduction

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 (Declaration of Independence, 1776).

The US Declaration of Independence

Reprint by William Stone, 1823 (CC0)

I´m not American, I watch the country from the outside. My sources of information are probably biased and even though I´m not feasting off the knowledge offered up on the altar of any and all social media platform, I too may be confined to the comforts of my own echo chamber. I get that. I also get that when writing about this for students, it´s almost impossible to get it right in the eyes of everyone. Why have I picked out these exact events to focus on? Why not spend classes on the joy of baseball or the triumphs of the community spirit, or something nice instead? Well, I´ll try to give my reason for it.

We have talked a lot about critical thinking this term and how it will become an even more important skill for you in the decades to come. I believe that any society´s progress towards the ideals of equality and liberty for all rests upon the ability to evaluate the past and the present critically. And the admiration of, heck, even love for a country, does not stand in opposition to raising critical perspectives on what´s going on there. They make up a pair of solid building blocks, love and criticism, where one rests on the other. I think such a critical approach in principle is the same kind of personal soul searching we do ourselves at times. It´s uncomfortable some times, and we might dislike what we find, but what that discomfort reveals needs to be aired out or dealt with for real, so that it becomes an experience we can build on and learn from. I don´t know about you, but I have plenty of ideals and principles that I am struggling to live up to. I don´t hate myself for that, but I like to think that I´m working on it, and in my everyday trying to make them  “self-evident” too. That´s why. And also that I don´t really get baseball;) Ok, so back to the quote from the Declaration of Independence.

Bold words in 1776, and a great vision for a people and a new country. But a guiding principle in practical politics and governance? The ideals stand firmly, but the historical evidence of a state unable to live up to its creed has been piling up, to say the least. To begin with, most of those who signed the declaration in the summer of 1776 were slave owners (Parsa, 2019). The hypocrisy is overwhelming. Nikole Hannah-Jones, Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist writing for the 1619 Project in the New York Times Magazine highlights the fact that …

“there is no mention of slavery in the final Declaration of Independence. Similarly, 11 years later, when it came time to draft the Constitution, the framers carefully constructed a document that preserved and protected slavery without ever using the word. In the texts in which they were making the case for freedom to the world, they did not want to explicitly enshrine their hypocrisy, so they sought to hide it” (Hannah-Jones, 2019).

The first permanent British colony in this new world was Jamestown, Virginia, founded in 1607. 22 years later, the first slave ship arrived (Hacker, 2020). It was there from the beginning, so the fact that most of the signees owned slaves might not be that surprising after all (Maloy, 2023). Even though Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, and two years later, Congress passed the 13th amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery in the USA, the fight for equal rights had only just begun. In the following section, I will point out two Supreme Court decisions that are considered landmark cases in the history of the Court and the nation. One from 1896 and another from 1954.

Slaves Arriving at Jamestown, 1619

Howard Pyne, 1901 (CC0)

Bibliography

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Hacker, J. D. (2020). From ‘20. and odd’ to 10 million: The growth of the slave population in the United States. Slavery & abolition, 41(4), pp. 840–855.

Hannah-Jones, N. (2019, August 14). Our democracy’s founding ideals were false when they were written. Black Americans have fought to make them true. Retrieved April 2023, from www.nytimes.com/section/magazine: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/ 2019/08/14/ magazine/black-history-american-democracy.html

Maloy, M. (2023, June 20). The Founding Fathers Views of Slavery. Retrieved March 2024, from The American Battlefield Trust: https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles /founding-fathers-views-slavery

NAACP. (n.d.). History of Lynching in America. Retrieved April 2023, from www.naacp.org: https://naacp.org/find-resources/history-explained/history-lynching-america

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National Archives. (n.d.). https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/voting-rights-act. Retrieved April 2023, from https://www.archives.gov/: https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/voting-rights-act

National Constitution Center. (n.d.). Right to Vote Not Denied by Race. Retrieved April 2023, from https://constitutioncenter.org/: https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/amendments/amendment-xv

Parsa, A. (2019, September 1). Thirty-four of the 47 men depicted in the famous “Declaration of Independence” painting were slaveholders. . Retrieved April 2023, from www.politifact.com: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/ 2019/sep/10 /arlen-parsa/evidence-shows-most-47-men-famous-declaration-inde/

Plessy v. Ferguson, 210 (US May 18, 1896).

Romo, V. (2018, March 26). Linda Brown, Who Was At Center Of Brown v. Board Of Education, Dies. Retrieved April 2023, from https://www.npr.org/: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/03/26/597154953/linda-brown-who-was-at-center-of-brown-v-board-of-education-dies

Schmidt, C. W. (2018, January 15). Martin Luther King Jr., the Law, and the Courts. Retrieved 2023 April, from https://blogs.kentlaw.iit.edu/iscotus/: https://blogs.kentlaw.iit.edu/iscotus/martin-luther-king-law/

Southern Poverty Law Center. (n.d.). Ku Klux Klan. Retrieved April 2023, from www.splcenter.org: https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideology/ku-klux-klan

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