“Let’s begin by saying that we are living through a very dangerous time. Everyone in this room is in one way or another aware of that. We are in a revolutionary situation, no matter how unpopular that word has become in this country. The society in which we live is desperately menaced, not by Khrushchev but from within. To any citizen of this country who figures himself as responsible – and particularly those of you who deal with the minds and hearts of young people – must be prepared to ‘go for broke.'” – James Baldwin, A Talk to Teachers (December 21, 1963)
Baldwin argues that the real crisis in America is not an external threat but the nation’s own internal injustices. He calls on responsible citizens, especially educators, to fully commit to the struggle against systemic oppression. His warning suggests that addressing these issues requires bold action, as challenging the status quo will inevitably provoke resistance.
As I sat in a meeting with a group of progressive friends over Zoom recently, I let it all out. I spoke as honestly as I ever have about my true feelings, which took place just hours before the 2025 State of the Union Address. At that time, I could no longer contain my anger and frustrations. These frustrations go back many years. They are not a product of the current state of affairs in this country.
I have spent a tremendous amount of time studying and critically examining American history. We are all taught as Americans, from our earliest years of schooling that America is a democracy, in fact, we are told that the USA is the most exceptional democracy that has ever existed. We learn that The Founding Fathers created a new nation based on freedom, liberty, and justice where “all men are created equal.”
All people may be created equally, but that does not automatically mean they experience equal treatment. Long before the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia convened, multiple English colonies had written their captivity of chattel into their laws. Those who were of African ancestry were already not included in the freedoms granted to the people of this new nation. Indians, who were called savages, likewise were not to be included in the masses that would be protected by the Bill of Rights.
On June 21, 1788, New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify this new founding document. On March 4, 1789, the first Congress was seated and on May 29, 1790, Rhode Island became the last state to ratify the Constitution. The Constitution mandated that a decennial census be conducted beginning in 1790. This first count of the nation’s population recorded 697,624 enslaved Africans, one hundred seventy-one years after the first kidnapped Africans arrived on a slaving ship in Virginia in 1619.
At the time of the first Census, several states still had laws allowing slavery. In the 1770s Black people sent petitions to governments of states that practiced slavery demanding abolition and an end to this inhumane practice. Vermont, an independent republic, passed the first law to abolish slavery. In 1780 Pennsylvania passed the next gradual emancipation law, followed by New Hampshire and Massachusetts in 1783 and Connecticut and Rhode Island a year later. Each of these laws was designed to very slowly emancipate the captive Africans. None wanted to do so immediately.
Each of the original thirteen colonies legally practiced slavery. I doubt if many of you were taught this in history class. America began as a collection of slave states. This is the type of information that is being banned across the country. However, the evidence of this is easy to find and was left behind by the men who created this nation.
They did not hide from their bad deeds. They felt no shame proclaiming “freedom” for themselves from the tyrannical rule of the English King, while simultaneously continuing the captivity of generations of African people. Some of these Africans were still held captive in the thirteen colonies on the eve of the Civil War. Nearly four million around the country, including many of my ancestors, were held in bondage when Lincoln issued his famous Emancipation Proclamation in 1863.
Thomas Jefferson called slavery a “hideous blot” and “a moral depravity,” but held hundreds of Africans captive at Monticello. He condemned the trade in African bodies in the first draft of the Declaration of Independence accusing King George of promoting the trade:
“he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it’s 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. this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, & murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.”
This was removed from the final draft. Jefferson later wrote about how God would look upon those practicing slavery when he wrote these words:
“This is so true, that of the proprietors of slaves a very small proportion indeed are ever seen to labour. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever: that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events: that it may become probable by supernatural interference! The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a contest.”
The original Constitution contained over 4,000 words. Democracy is not included in that count. The nation was founded as a republic. Article Four, Section Four says “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.”
I cringe when I hear people talking about “protecting our democracy.” Why? This “democracy” allowed my family to continue to be enslaved in Mississippi until December 6, 1865, when the Thirteenth Amendment outlawed the practice by saying in Section One:
“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
That caveat was borrowed from the many gradual emancipation laws passed in the early years of the republic.
Our “democracy,” which so many shout about saving, allowed Black men to be slaughtered by the thousands while attempting to register and or vote after the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified on February 3, 1870. This violence continued with racial terror lynchings and anti-black race riots across the country until the 1960s.
This “democracy” allowed rabidly racist, segregationist Strom Thurman to serve 48 years in Congress. This “democracy” stood by and watched while peaceful, non-violent Black people were beaten, humiliated and murdered while simply demanding to be treated as citizens who were supposed to be protected by the Constitution. This “democracy” gave us the murders of Eric Garner, Mike Brown, Tamir Rice, George Floyd and Breanna Taylor among many dozens more.
What is so wonderful about this “democracy” that it allowed these horrors to occur for centuries? It is a flawed system that does not need protection. It needs reform, not the fake kind! Real reform that will not allow a convicted felon to run for President. Real reform that will not overturn laws and practices that have been intended to redress the harms of bigotry, hate, and unpunished violence against marginalized people of all kinds in this country that wants the world to see it as a beacon of hope.
My favorite American patriot of all time was the great orator and leader Frederick Douglas who said this in regard to the Fourth of July celebration:
“Feeling themselves harshly and unjustly treated by the home government, your fathers, like men of honesty, and men of spirit, earnestly sought redress. They petitioned and remonstrated; they did so in a decorous, respectful, and loyal manner. Their conduct was wholly unexceptionable…With brave men there is always a remedy for oppression. Just here, the idea of a total separation of the colonies from the crown was born! It was a startling idea, much more so, than we, at this distance of time, regard it…”
Douglass questioned whether the freedoms celebrated by White Americans extended equally to Black Americans. He argued it was deeply unjust that African Americans were expected to offer gratitude for an independence that explicitly excluded them. Douglass cited numerous examples of the achievements and everyday lives of Black Americans, underscoring their humanity and dignity. He rejected the notion that he should even need to argue against the brutal system of slavery, deeming it inherently and self-evidently immoral.
“…To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.” – Frederick Douglas, What to the Slave is your Fourth of July? (July 5, 1852)
Nearly a century after the end of slavery, racial equality remained unfulfilled in America. By 1963, widespread segregation, systemic discrimination, and poverty continued to marginalize African Americans. That stark contradiction between America’s professed ideals of freedom and the reality of racial injustice led Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and over 200,000 demonstrators to gather in Washington DC, demanding that America fulfill the promise of its founding documents.
“…the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we’ve come here today to dramatize a shameful condition. In a sense we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the “unalienable Rights” of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.” – Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (August 28, 1963)
In the mid-1960s, escalating racial tensions erupted into violent uprisings in American cities, most notably in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. Responding to the unrest, President Lyndon Johnson appointed the Kerner Commission to investigate the underlying causes. The commission’s findings exposed pervasive racism, poverty, and police corruption, highlighting the distrust between law enforcement and African American communities.
“Not only are many police departments more willing to countenance crime in the ghettoes than in the white areas, in some cases they also participate in it. Ghetto residents are usually well aware of police corruption, and many a Negro youth has first-hand knowledge of which officer gets a payoff from whom—where and when. Corruption in police departments is nothing new, but when combined with a growing sense of race pride among Negroes, it can result in the authority of the police being undercut drastically. One youth in Watts said, “The police used to be a man with a badge; now he’s just a thug with a gun.” – Excerpt from the suppressed, preliminary report of the Kerner Commission, The Harvest of American Racism: The Political Meaning of Violence in the Summer of 1967 (November 22, 1967)
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Ben Curtis (AP), Win McNamee (AP), Julia Demaree Nikhinson (AP), and Jon Elswick (AP)
