Every July 4th I remember as a kid was spent at Holiday Lake, a state park near Appomattox, Virginia. Our family and two others from our neighborhood – the Johnsons and the News – went there for breakfast and a day of fishing and swimming. On several occasions I would go with my father and Raymond New to fish a couple of hours before breakfast. By the time we got to shore we could smell the sweet aroma of bacon and sausage.
Remembering those days conjures up many good feelings about the fourth of July for me. I didn’t think about the significance of the day, and I doubt any of the other kids from our neighborhood did either. To us it was a chance to go to Holiday Lake for the day and have some fun. It wasn’t everyday that we got to do that. Only special occasions, and July 4th was one of them.
The Declaration of Independence is among the world’s most eloquent statements of people’s desire for political freedom and the will to do whatever it takes to obtain it. Growing up it never occurred to me that its call for the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness did not include people of color. I didn’t think about the fact that black Americans might have viewed July 4th in a different way from me and my family. No doubt Holiday Lake was a “whites only” lake and park back then. Being limited in the number of places you could go on a holiday like July 4th because of the color of your skin was not something I knew even existed. When you’re ten years old those kinds of things are far from your mind.
Not any more, though. These days I wonder how our nation could have been so short sighted and small minded when it came to racial equality. What were our political, community, and church leaders thinking as they went about their business making sure white people had every advantage possible and black people knew their place? It’s like reading something you cannot believe was once true. Yet it was, made all the more real by the fact that even now people of privilege are doing things to limit the freedom and rights of minorities, the poor, and gays and lesbians. Gays and lesbians pay taxes like everyone else, but cannot be married under civil law in many states. So do the poor and all minorities. Yet voter ID laws whose worth or necessity have yet to be proven have been enacted by Republican controlled legislatures across the country, laws that make it difficult for these tax paying Americans meet unnecessary requirements to register and vote. Moreover, these laws have been passed when the biggest threat to our democracy is not voter fraud, but voter apathy.
The thing I think about these days as Independence Day approaches is how anyone who supports placing unnecessary obstacles in the way of other people registering to vote, or wants rights they have denied to others because of their sexual orientation, could possibly celebrate the fourth of July with a clear conscience. It seems to me right wing politicians and their Christian supporters have lost sight of what the Declaration of Independence was actually about. It was about taxation without representation. Denying an American the right to vote or making it harder to do so, denying people the right to enjoy freedoms and privileges everyone else enjoys, or in general trying to limit the rights of others in ways you don’t want your own limited is precisely what our founders were opposing. That is what drove Thomas Jefferson to write the inspired words he wrote. How can anyone read what he said and not understand that the real threat to our way of life is not freedom and justice for all, but limits to freedom and injustice disguised as righteous principle?
July 4th is not about voter restrictions or unequal rights for all. It is about the opposite, about making it as easy as possible for people to vote, about removing any and all restrictions on every American enjoying the full range of freedoms intended for everyone, about creating a society where life, liberty, and happiness are pursued to the fullest extent of every person’s ability. Would that all of us would experience in some mystical way being born again on the fourth of July to these great and enduring values.
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