What does the Fourth of July mean to you?

What does the Fourth of July mean to you?

To me, being slightly cynical, one thing it means is a triumph of branding.

July 4th = Independence. And Independence = Freedom. Who could be against that?

Well, some African-Americans, who note that “independence” did not apply to most Black people in America. They say “independence” was a sham, and some American Blacks don’t celebrate it as an expression of freedom. 

But a very large majority do. 

A few weeks ago, in a Facebook post, I off-handedly described Juneteenth as “the Black Fourth of July.”

By that I mean it celebrates freedom, but I got some pushback both from some Blacks and whites.

OK by me. There is no statement that I can make — from freedom to motherhood — that won’t be challenged by someone. As one wise-cracker wrote, “Freedom of speech is important because it lets us know who the idiots are.”

For most Americans, July 4th means vacation, hot dogs, family, the shore or the mountains, parades, flag-waving — many of the great things in American life.

When my kids were young, one thing I would do on the Fourth of July was read and explain the Declaration of Independence to them. It was as much for me as it was for them. Maybe more. 

The Founding Fathers (this is so embarrassing) — white, male, Europeans — produced a document and a plan for government that has stood the test of time, and provided a blueprint for how free people could rule themselves. The American model has been widely emulated.

Perfect? No.

The huge stain on the document was its silence on slavery. Then the Constitution made slaves 3/5s of a person.

You might say the Declaration was the original Grievance Poster. It listed in excruciating detail the offenses the Crown had committed against its subjects.

It was the formalization of a war that had begun a year earlier when Minutemen engaged British troops in skirmishes at Concord and Lexington, Mass.

Ralph Waldo Emerson later commemorated that in his “Concord Hymn”:

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,

   Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,

Here once the embattled farmers stood

   And fired the shot heard round the world.

The Declaration signed by the members of the Continental Congress was a death warrant for the signers, and none used a screen name. Had the war gone badly, they all would have faced the noose as traitors.

And the war did go badly, for a long time.

One of our greatest Americans, George Washington, became a master of hit-and-run and retreat as he faced the world’s largest and most experienced army. He lost battle after battle, but held his army together and never allowed it to be cornered.

Without his leadership and resourcefulness, we would not have won the war, most historians agree. He reluctantly accepted the presidency, and relinquished it with a grace that became American custom, until Donald J. Trump.

Yes, he was a slave holder and that needs to be told, too. He ordered his slaves to be freed only after his death.

But had the colonies lost the war the slaves would not have been freed because it was Britain that introduced slavery to North America.

I mention that because when we talk about slavery, and we should in schools and elsewhere, it must be contextualized against the backdrop of history — slavery dates back to Biblical times and was practiced by Blacks as well as whites — as well as how it was practiced in the Colonial era, which is to say in large swaths of the globe.

That is not a justification. It is just a fact.

And “freedom,” too, should be discussed in the context of those who didn’t have it. 

The Constitution opens with the statement that the governing document seeks “to form a more perfect union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility. . . .”

Not “perfect,” but “more perfect.”

The earlier Declaration declared unalienable rights to include “life, liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Not a guarantee of happiness, but freedom to pursue it.

And that’s what July 4th means to me.