Honor democracy on July 4, but celebrate all Americans’ independence on Election Day

What does patriotism on the Fourth of July look like for Black people after the brutal killing of George Floyd? What does it mean for a nation founded on the principle of “all men are created equal” when women and people of color are still struggling for justice and equality almost 250 years later?

Nothing could be more patriotic than honoring the right that so many have fought for and that so many, particularly African Americans, have died for: the right to vote. The real fireworks, the real meaning of Independence Day, is in voting.

Nearly 170 years ago on July 4, 1852, Frederick Douglass — a former slave, renowned author and abolitionist — asked an all-white audience, “What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July?” His answer: “a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.”

Since the founding of this nation, we have celebrated the Fourth of July as the birth of our independence from the British crown. For more than 80 years, we have recognized the day as a federal holiday. This year in particular, it bears asking: What exactly are we all celebrating on July Fourth, and how exactly should we be celebrating it?

For me, the answers to these questions have always been complicated. This Black daughter of Nigerian immigrants who never took their American-ness for granted grew up with such profound patriotism that the gleam of my family’s fully red, white and blue clothing nearly blinded my white, Iowan husband on his first July Fourth with my relatives. The holiday has always served as a celebration of our hopes for the country.

For my coauthor Nancy Levit of the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law, the answers to these questions have become more complicated over time. She is the white daughter of middle-class parents, and her life as a woman in a male-dominated profession opened her eyes to the meaning of privilege and structural discrimination, and raised questions for her about what it meant for all “men” to be created equal. For her, the Fourth has become a symbol of this nation’s promise.

For both of us, it is the failure of our country to live up to the ideals of equality and liberty, particularly in this moment of stark but much-needed protests against racial injustice, that has prompted us to call for a new vision for Independence Day and a new means of celebrating it — for a renewed commitment to voter registration and voting.

The year 2020 marks the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which gave women the right to vote. It also marks its 55th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Although it has been gutted by Supreme Court decisions, it has helped to protect the voting rights of African Americans and other people of color.

In that spirit, we propose a simple starting place for celebrating this year’s Fourth of July: Turn Nov. 3 into 2020’s Independence Day. Let’s all make a pact to #ReclaimTheFourth by not just convincing, but also ensuring that one other previously unregistered friend, acquaintance or neighbor registers to vote in time for the November election — and actually votes.

The origins of our country are a series of acts of collective rebellion against oppression. It is a painful irony that the war for independence was a rebellion against autocratic rule — at that time, the Stamp Act, the Tea Act and the Coercive Acts. The Intolerable Acts of our time are a little different: severe racial and economic disparities in educational access and experience; widening wealth gaps that can be traced directly back to slavery and that have been reinforced and enforced through and by law; sharp inequities in access to jobs and bias and discrimination in employment; differential access to health care as well as discrimination and bias in health care treatment; and even racial inequality in the right to move freely in this country.

Transforming the power of today’s protests into massive voter registration drives is a necessary first step to bringing a new answer to Frederick Douglass’ question. The next time someone asks what the Fourth of July means to any American, of any race, we should be able to answer: a day of reclamation. A reclaiming of the heart of American patriotism, which is inclusivity, through the real practice of our democracy.

That was our struggle in 1776. It remains the struggle today.

Dean Angela Onwuachi-Willig is a professor at Boston University School of Law. She coauthored this with Nancy Levit, professor at the UMKC School of Law.

This story was originally published July 3, 2020 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Honor democracy on July 4, but celebrate all Americans’ independence on Election Day."