WE HOLD THESE TRUTHS...

WE HOLD THESE TRUTHS……

“I’m aware of my condition because of what’s been missing,

human rights for all the people of color

The white man’s disease is the same across the seas

He’s full of greed, he’ll stab his own mother”

            These are words from the song “Battle for My Life” by Evelyn Harris, and I first heard them sung by Sweet Honey in the Rock.  They reflect the deep ambivalence in the American experience about Thomas Jefferson’s powerful and famous words from the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

               When he wrote it, and when it was approved by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, the word “men” meant propertied males classified as “white.”  Fortunately for all of us, this idea of equality has taken hold of our hearts and minds, and we have been in a struggle ever since to see if this fundamental idea of equality applies to all human beings or just to a select few, as the “originalists” now indicate that it meant.

            Women heard this “self-evident truth” and felt that it applied to them.  People held as slaves heard this idea and felt that it applied to them.  Indeed people like Frederick Douglass castigated this contrast between the self-evident truth of equality and the reality of slavery in America, when he spoke to the Rochester Anti-Slavery Society in 1852 in celebration on July 5:

            “Fellow citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak

              to you here today?  What have I, or those I represent, to do with your

              national independence?.....What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of

              July?  I answer: a day that reveals to {him}, more than all other days in the

              year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which {he} is the constant victim.”

            Poor people heard that it applied to them, and many others have been moved and fired by this idea originally meant for white men of property.  All kinds of people, who had been pushed to the margins, have heard that this self-evident truth applied to them also.

            In the revival of Trumpian America, we see this same struggle more clearly again.  Those in political and economic power are seeking to take us as far back as they can towards the time when “all men” meant only white men who had property.  Let us not be naïve enough to believe that it is Donald Trump who is causing this.  His election is not the cause but rather the symptom of the continuing race, class, and gender struggles that have been part of our history from its European beginnings.  Trump is certainly a crude version of it, but those who elected him as President of the United States had this idea in mind:  get us back to the “original” version of that self-evident truth. 

            So, as we celebrate this powerful idea of equality this week, let us recall not just the white men (many of whom owned people as slaves) who articulated this vision of equality in 1776.  Let us recall and celebrate that great parade of witnesses who have marched and fought and struggled and died so that the idea of equality could be expanded to include as many people as possible.   Fortunately that list of witnesses is very long, so please be lifting up the names on your list this week,  and I’ll add a few here:  Harriet Tubman who escaped slavery and helped others to do so;  Ida Wells who was an “intersectionalist” long before it became a modern concept – fighting on issues of race and gender and class;  Charles Hamilton Houston who trained a generation of African-American lawyers to fight for equality; Myles Horton, who helped to found the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee which fought for labor and civil rights;  Delores Huerta who worked with Cesar Chavez to bring this vision to Latinx farmworkers.

            And now, of course, it is our turn.   On the second floor of the Atlanta Human and Civil Rights Museum, there is a powerful multi-media exhibit called “Move, Free, Act Gallery.” It flashes photos of people from all over the world fighting and struggling for equity and justice.  In the middle of that exhibit comes a powerful voice with these stirring words of inspiration and command:  “FIND YOUR VOICE….FIND YOUR VOICE…FIND YOUR VOICE.”  May we find our voices as individuals and as communities in this season of self-evident truths.