Why Didn't They Tell You?

“… and the truth shall make you free.”

— Jesus of Nazareth (John 8: 32b)

Why didn’t they tell you that something wonderful happened twelve score and ten years ago in Philadelphia?

Today I, an American of African heritage, have not come to bash the United States of America for its shortcomings but to praise our country (Yes, this is my country!) for something wonderful that took place at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on July 4, 1776. It was earth-shattering and created reverberations that are still being felt 250 years later. The event is the signing and issuing of the Declaration of Independence, creating the United States of America, which boldly declared that “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.” How wonderful it is that we have rights given to us by God and if God gave them to us, no man can rightly take them away.

No one can suppress God given rights with impunity; the guilty parties will pay a cost. That day, July 4, 1776, was the beginning of the end of slavery. Immediately some practices and perceptions changed. John Hope Franklin tells us that manumissions (freeing of slaves) and anti-slavery activities increased. This all culminated with the breakout of the Civil War in 1861: the cost to the nation of that war – 600,000 lives. Lincoln thought it was divine retribution; Thomas Jefferson predicted it.

But some of you say that those words were not meant for us, the Black People, people of African descent, bringing yourselves into agreement with the rabid racist, Chief Justice Roger Taney, who opined in the Dread Scott decision of 1857 that people of African descent could not be citizens of the United States. But the person who penned the words of the Declaration, Thomas Jefferson, knew better. Why else would he say, “Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever:” After intimating that God is going to intervene in some kind of way, he said “The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with [the whites] us in such a contest …” (from Notes on the State of Virginia, quoted by Edward J. Erler in Prophetic Statesmanship, p. 171). In his plea before the U. S. Supreme Court on behalf of the Amistad Africans, John Quincy, who was there when the country was being formed, appealed to the ideas of the Founding Fathers to justify his support of the Africans’ taking the lives of the Spaniards who were trying to enslave them.  They (the Africans) too were entitled to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. Abraham Lincoln was so sure that the promise of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness were for the Black People also that his whole political career was animated by an anti-slavery position grounded in his belief in and reverence for the Declaration of Independence.

Please understand that Taney’s rabid ruling was defanged by the Congress elected with Lincoln in 1860, the Radical Reconstruction Congress, and the American people with passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the ratification of the 13^th, 14^th, and 15^th Amendments to the U. S. Constitution. The forces set into motion by the Declaration of July 4, 1776 produced this wonderful outcome. The Constitution itself was modified to give freedom (abolition of slavery), citizenship, and the right to vote for people of African descent, especially for the recently freed slaves.

But what of this nation today? The United States of America is a great nation that has created a great civilization. It is not a perfect nation but it is a great nation. How long it will be great or if it will become greater, nobody knows. If God can call Nineveh a great city when He was about to destroy it for its sins, it is not unreasonable to say that America is great, in spite of its shortcomings. How the United States of America is perceived by people around the world is manifested by the millions upon millions from all parts of the world, of different races and ethnicities, who are clamoring to get here to be a part of this wonderful thing that we started 250 years ago. Haitians, Africans, Middle Easterners, Europeans, Asians, South Americans, Central Americans are all clamoring to get in, so much so that we have an immigration problem!