We further fought slavery’s lingering grip in the form of legal racial segregation. The Civil War and its attending constitutional amendments cemented in practice our theoretical commitments. Yet, at great cost, America removed the evil of race-based slavery from our midst. They were separated, too, by immense oppression, greed, and bloodshed. Historically, then, July 4 was not separated from Juneteenth by 14 days but by 89 years. It treated enslaved humans like animals and trained masters in the cruel arts of despotism. Despite many efforts, the institution remained, receding in the North but entrenching in the South. But we still failed miserably on the issue of race-based chattel slavery. In 1776, we had taken great strides toward realizing these commitments. It also posited the government’s obligation to protect that equality and to preserve those rights. This self-understanding articulated a belief in human equality, especially in the possession of natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That charter, Thomas Jefferson would say, described the “American mind,” providing a key to our self-understanding. Juneteenth comes 14 days before July 4, the day on which we celebrate these ideals as articulated in the Declaration of Independence. Instead, they were prescriptions, the setting of a standard by which we would measure ourselves, by which we would seek to preserve what we already had achieved and to reform where we fell short. Our founding ideals were not celebrations of a perfectly realized now.
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