This weekend, people across the country will gather in parks, on rooftops and around backyard grills to commemorate the holiday that honors America’s founding. They will also gather in streets, on plazas and in front of monuments to protest an America fewer and fewer recognize through a modern lens.
In the face of accelerated stripping of rights, terrorizing of marginalized communities, unconscionable wealth disparities and escalating hate and division, this occasion to honor the revolution that birthed our nation compels both actions.
Black Americans’, our’ relationship to this annual holiday has always been fraught. In 1852, nearly a century after the Declaration of Independence was signed, Frederick Douglass famously asked, “What to the slave is the Fourth of July?” His answer laid bare the hypocrisy of a nation that celebrated freedom while millions remained enslaved.
“I am not included within the pale of glorious anniversary!” Douglass said. “Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. … This Fourth July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.”
That tension still echoes today. We worship the ideals of liberty and equality, even as we struggle to confront the ways those promises remain unfulfilled. And, yet, Black Americans have continued to invest in an America with no promised return.
That selfless commitment — to serve a country that has so often betrayed us — has characterized our entire existence. And it’s enabled us to transform a country premised on our plundering towards a north star of equality.
But our journey toward that North Star is anything but linear. This year, as we mark one revolution, we stand on the precipice of another.
Unlike the revolution 249 years ago, the disquiet now is not from an external threat, but from within — an internecine battle over America’s identity that has been brewing since we took our first incomplete steps toward true democracy in passing the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Every American revolution has been driven by reckoning, by the need to close the gap between who we claim to be and who we truly are. The founders declared equality while preserving slavery. A century later, we codified civil rights in law while maintaining systems that continued to relegate Black Americans to second-class citizenship.
Today we face yet another moment of necessary transformation.
The current crisis stems from America’s inability to imagine itself beyond the mirror of its past — a nation defined by racial hierarchy and white cultural dominance. The rapid erosion of norms, rights and protections we’re witnessing isn’t merely a political shift; it’s a backlash against the inevitable demographic and cultural evolution of our country.
And while that backlash may feel sudden and shocking to some, for Black Americans, who have lived under systems of oppression since we arrived on these shores, it is unsurprising. We have been sounding the alarm for generations.
Achieving these goals amid America’s acute identity crisis requires revolutionary change. Not a war of arms, but a radical reimagining of who we are, what we value and how we share space and power. And every part of society plays a crucial role.
Civil society organizations serve as vital lifelines for vulnerable communities and enduring sites of resistance against oppression. We must support and protect them from growing attacks from the Trump administration.
Our courts, including the Supreme Court, must reclaim their role as constitutional guardians rather than enablers of unchecked executive power. That should start with the Supreme Court reversing its misguided presidential immunity ruling.
The business community must recognize that relentless attacks on the rule of law and the profit-generating principles of diversity equity, inclusion and accessibility will ultimately destabilize global economy systems, harming all of our economies in the process.
Congress must exercise its full constitutional powers — not only through oversight, but through accountability measures up to and including impeachment, as warranted. It has done so before and it must be willing to do so again.
And white Americans must do as Black people have done for centuries: believe in the capaciousness of America.
This requires an honest reckoning with the reality of changing demographics and an abiding faith in the constitutional democracy that defines and distinguishes us. It demands hard work to fuel abundance instead of a limiting mindset of scarcity.
Oppressed groups have long applied these beliefs to ensure that being a minority does not justify subjugation, even though that has been the lived history.
The goal of organizations like mine has never been to replicate past hierarchies with new groups in power. Rather, we work to create a new social order — a multiracial democracy where power is shared, dignity is sacred and thriving is the standard — for everyone.
No institution, sector or group of people is exempt in this moment. We who call America home must be willing to continually and courageously evolve as one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all.
Revolution is a frightening word for some, but the truth is, since 1776, we’ve gone through several. A convention in Seneca. A bridge in Selma. A bar in Greenwich Village.
And while they’ve each been turbulent and painful, we’ve come out the other side a stronger, more just society.
Just as it has in the past, revolutionary change can once again serve us well now, but only if we move forward together, embracing rather than resisting the diverse, multiracial democracy we are struggling to achieve.
The question before us isn’t whether America will change — it will. The question is whether we who love the promise of this country enough to admit its profound failings will guide that change toward a more perfect union or whether we will allow the Trump administration’s fear-mongering to drive us backward and further apart.
This weekend, let’s choose to honor the revolutionary spirit that has always been America’s greatest strength — not by clinging to the past, but by a new phase of nation-building that pushes us toward the future we’ve not yet achieved: an America great for all.
Janai Nelson is the president-director counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.
