07/04/2026
Celebrating Independence Day in America as an American Descendant of Slavery…
…is contradictory to my spirit because it places me at the intersection of grief and gratitude.
To know that “independence” was not extended to my ancestors when the Declaration of Independence was signed has never settled in my spirit.
Because the country my ancestors were forced to build up…
never came to aid in building us up in the aftermath of a Civil War we helped win for the good of the whole.
Even when the whole benefited from the labor of us.
And instead of helping us achieve that same independence, liberty, and freedom…
we were met with Jim Crow, redlining, racism, and the erasure of entire Black communities under the guise of urban development and city infrastructure.
So no…
I am not celebrating fireworks with blind cheers while tears still swell in my heart for those who died in captivity watching their masters celebrate the “land of the free”…
…while the only freedom they would ever know was the freedom of the afterlife.
Today, I am celebrating those who lived and made a home in a land that only wanted their labor…
but not the true value of their God-given gifts, humanity, and lives.
To be seen as human by people who saw you as property was never too much to ask…
…because we never should have had to ask for it at all.
So Happy Fourth of July to the descendants of those who survived the first Independence Day in captivity.
Your sacrifices will not go uncelebrated today.
And I pray we never confuse remembrance with bitterness…
Because some of us are not refusing to celebrate America.
We are refusing to forget what it cost our people to belong to it.
Frederick Douglass named that same contradiction in 1852 when he challenged America’s celebration of liberty while Black people were still denied the freedom America claimed to honor.
And here we are Saturday, July 4th, 2026.
Still fighting for full access to the life, liberty, and true pursuit of happiness this country promised…
while living in a system that has yet to fully repent for its original sin, even as it calls itself a Christian nation.
