I Question America.

On July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass spoke in Rochester, New York at an event commemorating the signing of the Declaration of Independence. It became one of Douglass’ most famous speeches: ‘What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?’[i] It was a powerful message in its unsparing condemnation of our nation’s ongoing embrace of chattel slavery – a condition from Douglass had escaped only 14 years prior.

Douglass exposes the contradictions and hypocrisy at the core of America’s celebration of its freedom as a nation, while it remained committed as a nation to allowing the institution of slavery to flourish within its borders. Douglass’ speech is like the closing argument of a trial. He reviews the evidence – the words of the Declaration of Independence in which the founders of our nation indict the tyranny of Great Britian and demand the right to shake off the bonds of tyranny and establish freedom. Then Douglass reminds his audience “the freedom gained is yours; and you, therefore may properly celebrate this anniversary…. [but]…what to the American slave,” he asks, “is your 4^th of July? To him your celebration is a sham.”

For the enslaved person, Douglass says, the 4^th of July “is 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.”

Improbably Douglass, who had himself suffered the agony and violence of enslavement, still had hope for his country, profoundly flawed as it was. “I do not despair of this country,” he said. “There are forces in operation, which must inevitably, work the downfall of slavery.” He was right, of course. But the cost was high.

Today we still live with the ongoing and destructive power of the white supremacist ideology that powered the American system of slavery, and that brought this country to fracture and near destruction in the 19^th century. All indications point to the unraveling of American democracy in the 21^st century.

Douglass warned us. He believed that the same spirit that caused the white population of the South rise up in rebellion against our country to preserve the right to own, buy, sell, rape, breed and kill other human beings, would live on. He predicted it would be “passed from sire to son.” It will not end,” Douglass predicted, “in a year. It will not end in an age.”[ii]

One hundred years after Douglass’ posed his question, civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer posed the question of our times: “is this America?”[iii] Slavery was long past in 1964, but peonage through sharecropping, Jim Crow segregation, and violent white supremacy still marked life for most Black people in the south. In 1964 Black activists like Hamer were still fighting for the right to participate as full citizens in American political life. Voting was still denied to Black people in much of the south and Hamer had experienced the violent response of white supremacists to the mere effort of Black people to register to vote.

Challenging the all-white Mississippi Democratic delegation from which Black people were illegally excluded, the Freedom Democratic Party, of which Mrs. Hamer was a member, challenged the right of the delegation to be seated for Mississippi at the convention. Only the MFDP, which had followed the rules for forming a Democratic delegation, and had complied with the constitution, holding party membership open to all Democrats without regard to race, should legitimately be seated, the MFDP argued before the Credentials Committee.

When called to testify, Mrs. Hamer recounted her harrowing experience being arrested and violently beaten in Mississippi after returning from registering to vote, and the relentless terror of white supremacist violence in her state. “Is this America?” Mrs. Hamer asked, “the land of the free and home of the brave? Where we have to sleep with our telephones off the hook because our lives be threatened daily, because we want to live as decent human beings, in America?”

The question was rhetorical, of course. This obviously was America. An America too often concealed, ignored, forgotten, denied, and far from the minds of those party delegates in New Jersey. But this too was America.

“If this is America,” Mrs. Hamer concluded, “then I question America.”

To question our nation is imperative. We question our nation because as citizens we are as co-owners of our national identity. To question our country is to demonstrate our right to question our country.

We must question our nation today precisely because our ability to openly question it in the coming days may be in peril. Every day that we still retain the right to speak, to protest, to demand, to refuse, to boycott, to march, to file suit, to argue – every day that we can still exercise those rights, we must exercise them.

Today many more Americans than ever in my lifetime are asking questions of and about our nation. Is this America? What is our national identity? What does it mean to be an American? How can so many institutions of our country have failed? Has our nation squandered its claims, however questionable, to moral leadership? To democracy? To decency? Who are we? What are we becoming?

That so many Americans are now asking these questions is a good thing. I have asked those questions many times over the course of my 35 years as a civil rights lawyer. But I confess that the answers to those questions have never felt as urgently needed as at this moment.

This July 4^th we must question America. We need less fireworks and hot dogs, and more dedicated time asking the hard questions about our nation. But the hardest questions are those we must ask of ourselves.

What are we prepared to do to fight for the idea of a truly just America even if we have never seen it? Where did we fail as citizens to uphold the sacred obligation to protect our democracy? Do enough Americans believe that it is possible to create a multi-racial democracy in which equality and justice and our core values? This was the America that the framers of the 14^th Amendment made possible.

Is it even possible to set our country on a course for redemption? How can we come to terms with the fact that half our fellow citizens embrace cruelty, racism, ignorance, and cultism over democracy? How will we navigate the violence and cruelty of these times and protect ourselves, our families, and our integrity?

If you are not asking those questions today, you haven’t been paying attention.

For the past three years I have also been focused on a different set of questions. If America as we know it cannot be saved and we are truly in the abyss, what is the new America we can create when we emerge from this dark place? What is our vision for that new America? What must we do now to lay the foundation for its creation?

Answering those questions animates my work and led me to create the 14^th Amendment Center for Law & Democracy at Howard Law School. Our country has been re-founded once. It will be time again when we leave this period behind. Do we know what kind of America we are prepared to build that will be better than the one that led us to this disastrous moment?

We needn’t have the answers today. But we must ask the questions, and perhaps just sit with the questions while we work relentlessly, courageously, and urgently to find the answers.

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[i] https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/nations-story-what-slave-fourth-july; You can find the text of the full speech here: https://loveman.sdsu.edu/docs/1852FrederickDouglass.pdf

[ii] Frederick Douglass, “What the Black Man Wants.” https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/1865-frederick-douglass-what-black-man-wants/

[iii] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/60-years-ago-fannie-lou-hamer-rattled-the-democratic-convention-with-her-is-this-america-speech