Happy July 4th!
Enjoy family and friends today.
As it always should have been.
As always, we present this classic:
What is the 4th of July to the American Negro?
From The NYT:
5 Words That Changed America
Jamelle Bouie
There is a moment for every American when she first encounters the Declaration of Independence. For most, it comes to her as scripture — the highest and most sacred text in the nation’s civic religion, encapsulated by its moving assertion of human equality: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”This Declaration is a profound statement of values: of a universal aspiration for human freedom. As President Gerald Ford said in a speech marking the nation’s bicentennial, “The Declaration is the Polaris of our political order — the fixed star of freedom. It is impervious to change because it states moral truths that are eternal.”
As a matter of civic faith, this is what the Declaration means. As a matter of history, however, the story is much more complicated.
As Thomas Jefferson wrote it, the Declaration was less an affirmation of human equality than a pointed claim about the nature of political authority and a powerful assertion of the right of revolution, informed by the Enlightenment writings of John Locke and other social contract theorists. It was meant as an argument about the preconditions of government — an assertion of the purity of prelapsarian life — not a road map for emancipation.
“The opening assertions of ‘self-evident’ truths concern men in a ‘state of nature’ before government was established,” the historian Pauline Maier observed in “American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence.” “With regard to persons, equality meant simply that no one held authority over others by right of birth or as a gift of God.”
In other words, Jefferson was channeling a common sentiment in Revolutionary-era America, “a political orthodoxy whose basic principles colonists could pick up from sermons or newspapers or even schoolbooks without ever reading a systematic work of political theory,” Maier wrote. Just look to Thomas Paine, who wrote in “Common Sense” — published about six months before the signing of the Declaration — that “all men being originally equals, no one by birth could have a right to set up his own family in perpetual preference to all others forever.”Jefferson’s equality was a thought experiment. It did not extend to political society, nor was it meant for those placed beyond the political community. Men could be created equal and still be different; men could be created equal and still be subordinate.
This, for many of the Patriot leaders, was a given.
But then there were those outside the circle of belonging: women, Natives, landless laborers and, most starkly, Black Americans, both free and enslaved. They did not read — or, most likely, hear — the Declaration as an abstract claim about a prelapsarian past. They understood it as a radical statement of principle for the present. And they wielded this principle against a society that would not extend the Revolutionary promise of freedom and self-government to those held in bondage.It was their Declaration — the one that they made for themselves — that stood for a universal claim of human equality in the here and now. And it was their Declaration that would come to supplant Jefferson’s historical and metaphysical one as the linchpin of America’s civic ideal, passing from Black Americans to abolitionists to the Republican Party and Abraham Lincoln, who consecrated their Declaration at Gettysburg as the spiritual foundation for a “new birth of freedom” and a “government of the people, by the people, for the people,” established “four score and seven years ago” in 1776.
It is this Declaration that is under assault from a political movement that rejects the credal vision of the American Republic in favor of an exclusionary racial nationalism, that defines American citizenship by blood and heritage, that sneers at the “five words about equality” in the Declaration and that worships at the altar of hierarchy and caste. But it is also this Declaration that still inspires Americans to fight for their place in this country and demand their right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
It is hard to exaggerate the alacrity with which Black Americans seized on the rhetoric of the Revolution to demand a free and equal place in the new and nascent American Republic.
Three versions of the National Anthem
Photography and the secret of Frederick Douglass’ power
No lie told.
This cracked me up…who represents FREEDOM more than Harriet Tubman?
For those who think that Juneteenth is in ‘competition’ with July 4th.
They are compliments to one another. Both bring completion to the theme of ‘America’ and ‘ Freedom’.
Renee
@PettyLuponeThis photo deserves a Pulitzer Prize.
Not only does it represent our current state of politics but it mirrors many photos of past which confirm the ugly truth about progress…
It must be fought for by every generation.
https://x.com/PettyLupone/status/2073462713867464966
Jaime Harrison
@jaimeharrison.bsky.social
On America’s 250th birthday, this message feels just as important today as when I first shared it.I love this country. That’s why I’ll never stop working to help America live up to its highest ideals.
That work isn’t finished. Now it’s our turn.
🇺🇸 Happy 250th Birthday, America.
https://bsky.app/profile/jaimeharrison.bsky.social/post/3mpt4esxz522m
𝓝𝓲𝓴𝓴𝓲 𝓑𝓪𝓻𝓷𝓮𝓼
@NikkiBarnesAs America prepares to celebrate 250 years, I want us to be honest about what we are celebrating.
America is 250 years old. Black freedom is not.
In 1776, when this nation declared that all men were created equal, our ancestors were enslaved.
In 1865, slavery was abolished, but freedom was immediately challenged by Black Codes, racial terror, and eventually Jim Crow.
In 1965, nearly 200 years after the Declaration of Independence, the Voting Rights Act finally gave the federal government the tools to protect Black Americans’ access to the ballot box.
And today, we are still fighting over voting rights, representation, education, economic opportunity, and whether this country will continue moving toward its promise or retreat from it.
So yes, celebrate America’s 250th birthday.
But do not ask Black Americans to pretend we are celebrating 250 years of freedom.
We are celebrating survival.
We are honoring resistance.
We are remembering the generations who fought to force America to expand the meaning of the words it wrote in 1776.
America is 250 years old.
Our freedom is not.
And the work of making those words true for everyone is still unfinished.
11:38 AM · Jul 4, 2026
.facebook.com/events/552371048498019/?ti=cl
Be A King
@BerniceKing
Democracy is not sustained by words alone. It is strengthened by truth, protected through courage, and expanded through our commitment to the dignity and rights of every person.
My father’s call remains urgent. May we answer it with disciplined love, moral clarity, and a renewed commitment to creating the Beloved Community.
#Nonviolence365 #BelovedCommunity #MLK #America250
https://x.com/BerniceKing/status/2073449145012998374
Adam Cochran (adamscochran.eth)
@adamscochran
1/10
Want to know how they quickly got 400 makes extremists in DC?
It’s because many of them are Republican staffers.
It’s the most overlooked scandal in the US right now:
2/10
How are they getting into these roles?
It’s part of a far-right extremist lobbying pipeline that’s been going on for at least 15+ years, and is now seeing the ‘fruits’ of its labor.
3/10
Major far-right lobbying groups will spend a large sums of money on what they call ‘community outreach and advocacy programs’
This has meant things like running ads & paying people to post ‘opinion pieces’ on sites like 4chan to ‘seed ideology’
4/10
It’s also meant providing funding to conservative clubs at high schools and colleges across the country.
The lobbyists then these networks to identify smart, right-leaning, but vulnerable individuals they can push extremist ideology on.
5/10
They give them scholarships, internships, references and all kinds of support to help up their pedigree while exposing them to their specific school of thought.
Then through donor networks, they call in favors to get these individuals placed as staffers on the hill.
6/10
Young Republican staffers have a higher concentration of extremist views tied to lobbying groups and thinktanks than ever before.
You can see it in office decorations and comms accounts, countless subtle callouts to white nationalist movements.
7/10
And many times, this is all entirely unknown to the Congressional representative.
These staffers don’t really report in to the Congress person. They answer to a now indoctrinated ideology from their lobbying group – often with their own handler.
8/10
The reason the Patriot Front wears masks isn’t because they fear losing their jobs.
It’s because lobbying groups know if you knew what percentage of them were staffers, you’d realize just how deeply compromised the government is.
9/10
These are the people shaping policy, and advising your members of Congress, and managing internal ops at the White House
These are often the people being groomed for the next run at an open Congressional seat.
Often all while pretending to be a moderate in front of their boss.
10/10
They ‘disappeared’ after the last election, because many of them had new jobs in Congress or at the White House and they had achieved their objective.
But the reason you can assemble 400 of them at the drop of a hat in DC, is because they are already there, and it’s a short ride on the train lines they already commute, to get to the hill.
5:18 PM · Jul 4, 2026
https://x.com/adamscochran/status/2073456320829600002
Pope Leo XIV
@Pontifex
A country’s vitality is deeply tied to the value it affords to human life in every form and condition, acknowledging the dignity endowed upon every human person by virtue of their very existence. The moral greatness of a nation is manifested, above all, in its capacity to support, protect and cherish the lives of all, especially the most vulnerable and those whose worth is questioned.
4:30 PM · Jul 3, 2026
https://x.com/Pontifex/status/2073081841087565836
Mark Irons
@MarkIronsMedia
Remark from Pope Leo just now during live video message in Philadelphia:
“…all men and women are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, including the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. While couched in the language of 🧵
https://x.com/MarkIronsMedia/status/2073071172510445885
Fly Sistah 🪷
@Fly_Sistah
Descendants of first enslaved Africans to arrive in Virginia reflect on America’s 250th anniversary
The Tucker siblings, descendants of Antony and Isabella who arrived at Point Comfort in 1619 on a slave ship, share what America’s 250th anniversary means to their family.
https://x.com/Fly_Sistah/status/2073065499349434539
theGrio.com
@theGrio
Shannon LaNier carries two legacies into America’s 250th birthday weekend: he is the sixth great-grandson of Thomas Jefferson and a direct descendant of Sally Hemings, the 14-year-old girl Jefferson enslaved.
https://x.com/theGrio/status/2073149877480042804
EBONY
@EBONY
The story of America cannot be told without the story of Black America.
As the nation marks 250 years since its founding, EBONY looks back at the people, movements, and defining moments that shaped this country. As well as the generations who refused to be written out of its history.
Tap to explore 250 years of Black America: bit.ly/4b2Ek0w 🖤
https://x.com/EBONY/status/2073091786650607769
Ricky Davila
@therickydavila.bsky.social
Nothing says MAGA quite like seeing the cowardly masked Nazi group Patriot Front marching in the streets of Washington DC on July 4th with their racist confederate flags in honor of the orange felon. How far this country has fallen in 250 years because of fascists.
12:00 PM · Jul 4, 2026
https://bsky.app/profile/therickydavila.bsky.social/post/3mptjxxu4dc2w
where is the lie?
Covie
@covie_93
The white supremacists wear masks because they’re your neighbors, teachers, doctors, plumbers, cops, electricians etc…
5:15 PM · Jul 4, 2026
https://x.com/covie_93/status/2073455685312905649
Longtime Black Man Here
@groove_sdc
When I talk about DSA being anti-Black this is what I’m talking about.
This goes for Our Revolution, Sunrise Movement, leftists and progressives too btw.
https://x.com/groove_sdc/status/2073396460565962824
Be A King
@BerniceKing
As America reflects on 250 years, truth must be part of the commemoration.
For Black Americans, America as a democracy is only 61 years old. That truth is not a rejection of this nation. It is a call for America to become what it has promised.
May we choose truth, justice, and the Beloved Community.
#Nonviolence365 #BelovedCommunity #America250
https://x.com/BerniceKing/status/2073378680055697484
Smithsonian’s NMAAHC
@NMAAHC
“I, Too” by Langston Hughes, 1926
s.si.edu/4eXo1TO
📸 “The American Flag: Photographs from the National Museum of African American History and Culture”
https://x.com/NMAAHC/status/2073391777264922632
Happy July 4th🇺🇸🇺🇸
Good Afternoon, Everyone😊😊😊