As an American, I took for granted celebrating the 4th of July with a parade complete with the local high school marching band, horses from all the roundup clubs in the area, and Shriners in every imaginable conveyance -- miniature cars, miniature motorcycles, motorized bowling pins. I kid you not! Bowling pins.
Rodeo queens and their princesses, in color coordinated Western hats and boots, riding horses with ribbons braided into their manes and tails. (The horses' mains and tails, of course.) There were princesses representing every organization you can think of. Local beauty pageant winners enthroned on new convertibles, by courtesy of local car dealerships. Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, children from the local dance schools. Local children on their personally decorated bikes. Floats with patriotic images fashioned from chicken wire and crepe paper. Floats with square dancers and country music. Floats with polka music. And more people downtown than you'd see all the rest of the year combined.
Or a private family picnic with homemade ice cream. The little kids would sit on the churn while the men turned the crank. I can't tell you why the little ones sat on the churn, but somehow it was an honor. And there would be fireworks in the yard, set alight by the men or the big cousins. Sometimes that would get pretty exciting if something went awry and the screaming, sparking, exploding whatevers got loose among the grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins.
The city sponsored fireworks displays. Music, more politicians, and much safer fireworks displays.
I'm quite sure I was grown before I really knew what all the brouhaha was meant to be about. We got the bare-bones history in school. July 4, 1776, the date the Declaration of Independence was signed. But it wasn't until I read David McCullough's 1776 that I came to understand that that document was the formal declaration of war against Great Britain. A war that had already been going on for some time.
The Boston Massacre happened in 1770 and the Boston Tea Party in 1773. In September, 1774, twelve of the original thirteen British colonies in the Americas sent representatives to the First Continental Congress to draft a petition to the king and parliament asking for the repeal of the so-called Intolerable Acts. They got no reply.
Actual fighting broke out at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts in April, 1775 with British troops then controlling Boston. That same month George Washington was appointed to form the Continental Army and drive the British out of Boston.
So what about that 4th of July date and the Declaration of Independence?
The Declaration of Independence
It does seem that it came a little late to the game. But it announced itself as "The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America."
Truth be told, "states" at that time meant "sovereign" nations. Our country would be a confederacy of independent states until The Constitution of the United States was ratified in 1788 and took effect in 1789. Even then, it took a second war with Great Britain and a civil war to make the United States imaginable. We continue to need some serious work to realize the concept of a unified nation.
The Declaration of Independence also said, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. That they are endowed by by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
I remember thinking that "all men" meant "humanity." No. Those "unalienable Rights" only applied to Englishmen who owned property and that property could include enslaved people.
I grew up in the failing, whites-only world of a segregated Oklahoma. It was obvious to many of us, even in the 60's, that the way it had always been, had always been wrong and must change.
Amendments to our Constitution, court decisions, and elections have brought us on a winding, rocky road to our current understanding of "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness" for all Americans and "a more perfect Union." Here we are in 2021 still far short of the goals of The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution.
A mass burial on Hart Island in the Bronx borough of New York.
Pulitzer Award photo by AP photographer John Minchillo (04-09-2020)
A protester in Minneapolis unrest following the death of George Floyd
Pulitzer Award photo by AP photographer Julio Cortez (05-28-2020)
I want to trust that we are coming out of a dark time in our history and that I will live long enough to see those goals achieved and have good reason to celebrate this nation.
