Below is my column in today's edition of the Grand Haven Tribune.
July fourth is, at its root, a celebration of the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the document signed 248 years ago whereby the 13 British colonies declared their independence from the rule of King George III. The document itself is stunning in its prose, argument and ideals, and it inspired other movements around the world.
The intellectuals and revolutionaries in France were inspired to begin their own French Revolution in 1789, eventually forming the French Consulate and solidifying many of the principles of a liberal democracy. Our nascent democracy maintained a principle of neutrality (a story told memorably in the musical “Hamilton”), but that stance created sharp divisions and was one of the political realities that created the first two-party system in our country.
As a part of that revolution, leaders in the French Enlightenment drafted the “Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.” As in our own declaration, the French declaration declared a belief in the natural rights of each person. We had declared belief in the unalienable rights of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The French declared that all “men are born and remain free and equal in rights” and, furthermore, that there was a right to liberty, private property, the inviolability of the person and resistance to oppression.
Just two years after this document was published, slaves in the French colony of St. Domingue joined with free people of color (often mixed-race individuals of both African and French descent who had less rights than the white colonialists) and revolted. Within 10 days, the slaves took control of the entire Northern Province and within a year they controlled a third of St. Domingue. The battle would continue, though, for more than a decade. After achieving complete independence, they published the Haitian Declaration of Independence in 1804.
What we can see in the relationship between these three movements for independence is how freedom was variously understood and then applied in each context. Our own Declaration of Independence, of course, spoke of the inherent freedom of all men, a phrase that is often assumed to refer to humanity. And yet, the rights declared in the Declaration were not even given to all men in 1776. Slaves were clearly not understood to have an inherent right to freedom – though many people do not know that the original draft of the Declaration of Independence included a clause about slavery.
In the initial draft, Thomas Jefferson’s list of grievances against King George III included the king’s role in both creating and perpetuating the transatlantic chattel slave trade, writing, “he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither.” He went on to describe slavery as “piratical warfare,” “execrable commerce” and an “assemblage of horrors.”
However, one-third of those who would go on to sign the declaration were enslavers (as was Thomas Jefferson himself!), so it is no surprise that this clause did not remain in the final form of the draft. Too many people depended upon the traffic of enslaved Africans for the economic prosperity to call out and condemn the trade so clearly. In Jefferson’s autobiography, he blamed the removal of the slaves on South Carolina and Georgia, noting that while his own state of Virginia had sought to restrict the trade, those states wished it to continue.
All of this underscores the fact that freedom, as articulated in the Declaration of Independence, was at that time a dream yet to be realized. Much of the story of our country in the years that follow is how freedom advanced, as more and more people claimed the freedom promised to them in 1776. And so we ended slavery, but then quickly the Jim Crow south kept African Americans from having equal rights. In many ways, the battle for equal rights for African Americans continues, as Black bodies are still not valued at the same level of white bodies in our culture.
Women were given the right to vote in 1920 with the 19th Amendment, but that right was not extended to all women as prohibiting any denial of the right to vote on the basis of sex did not prohibit discrimination in other ways, And so Native-American, Asian-American, Latinx and African-American suffragists have all had to continue to fight for their own rights long after ratification of the 19th Amendment.
Furthermore, the 19th Amendment spoke only of the right to vote. In 1972, the Equal Rights Amendment was placed before state legislatures for ratification, stating, “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.” Within a year, 30 states ratified the amendment, but the ratification stalled, and the seven-year deadline included in the legislation passed. While numerous attempts have been made to finish its ratification, they have not yet been successful.
The need for it is still clear. Women didn’t have the right to open a bank account without their husband’s signature until 1974. Marital rape was also legal before the 1970s – and though it was made a crime nationwide by 1993, married women are still treated differently than non-married women in rape cases quite differently in several states. With the current assaults on the rights of women to have control over their bodies, true freedom remains elusive. And not just women, many of those on the right who still oppose the Equal Rights Amendment do so because they fear an expansion of rights to queer and trans people.
And so, on tomorrow’s Independence Day holiday, absolutely celebrate the freedoms you have – but also perhaps consider those in our country whose freedoms are still limited, still circumscribed, by those with power and privilege. Recommit to working toward freedom for all people. Because, as Maya Angelou said, “The truth is, no one of us can be free until everybody is free.”
About the writer: The Rev. Dr. Jared C. Cramer, Tribune community columnist, serves as rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven. Information about his parish can be found at www.sjegh.com.
