{"id":17393,"date":"2025-10-09T14:43:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-09T14:43:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/?p=17393"},"modified":"2025-10-09T14:43:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-09T14:43:08","slug":"for-freedom-for-equality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/2025\/10\/09\/for-freedom-for-equality\/","title":{"rendered":"For Freedom. For Equality."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The Revolution promised freedom. Reconstruction promised equality. Neither fight is finished.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

By Ben Jealous<\/strong><\/p>\n

In my house, two legacies face each other.<\/p>\n

On one wall hangs a reproduction of The Spirit of \u201976, painted by my cousin Archibald M. Willard for the nation\u2019s hundredth birthday. The central drummer in that painting \u2014 the older man leading the trio \u2014 was modeled after Archibald\u2019s father, my cousin too.<\/p>\n

The Spirit of \u201976 is America\u2019s most famous Revolutionary painting \u2014 the definitive image of independence, instantly recognizable wherever it appears. First displayed at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, it captured the mood of a nation celebrating its hundredth year and looking back on its birth in revolution.<\/p>\n

For my family, it is not just symbolic. My father descends from six officers in the Massachusetts Line of the Continental Army \u2014 and from a seventh, a 13-year-old fifer who fought at Lexington and Concord. He was the youngest combatant on that battlefield, carrying both a fife and a musket into the first fight of the Revolution. He lived into his 90s, long enough to be photographed \u2014 the only person from that battlefield whose face we can still see.<\/p>\n

That painting is the definitive picture of 1776: a battered but unbroken march for freedom and equality. My family is literally in the frame \u2014 and in the fight.<\/p>\n

Across the room sits another inheritance: the desk of my mother\u2019s great-great-grandfather, Peter G. Morgan, born enslaved in Nottoway County, Virginia, in 1817.<\/p>\n

Beside it rests the courting set he bought so his three daughters, once freed, could welcome suitors in dignity.<\/p>\n

My family isn\u2019t just in the picture of 1776. We live the unfinished fight of 1876.<\/p>\n

A wager for freedom and equality<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 1864, while Petersburg was under Confederate siege, Morgan walked into a Confederate court and freed his wife and daughters.<\/p>\n

Virginia law was brutal: any Black person gaining freedom \u2014 and their family \u2014 had 12 months to leave the state. Fail to leave, and you could be seized and enslaved again.<\/p>\n

So Morgan wagered exile \u2014 or even re-enslavement \u2014 if Confederate authorities got to them before the Union did. Still, he took the risk. He bet everything on freedom and equality.<\/p>\n

He was right on the first count. And for a time, right on the second.<\/p>\n

Reconstruction\u2019s promise<\/strong><\/p>\n

After the war, Morgan served in Virginia\u2019s House of Delegates from 1869 to 1871. He sat on Petersburg\u2019s city council and school board.<\/p>\n

He helped build schools, relief associations, and even a bank. He believed that Reconstruction \u2014 America\u2019s \u201csecond founding\u201d \u2014 could finally make freedom and equality real.<\/p>\n

But he also lived to see those hopes collapse.<\/p>\n

The collapse came just after the hopeful celebration of 1876, with the Compromise of 1877 \u2014 a backroom deal to resolve the contested race between Democrat Samuel Tilden and Republican Rutherford Hayes. Republicans kept the White House by giving in to Democratic demands to pull federal troops from the South.<\/p>\n

With the old Union soldiers gone, white supremacists unleashed murderous violence to retake power. Reconstruction ended not with a bang but a betrayal \u2014 and lynch mobs burning human flesh.<\/p>\n

Twin revolutions, both unfinished<\/strong><\/p>\n

That is America in a nutshell: twin spirits, twin moments, both unfinished.<\/p>\n

1776 was for freedom.<\/p>\n

1876 was for equality.<\/p>\n

Yet neither dream dies.<\/p>\n

The fire passes from Harriet Tubman to Ella Baker. From Frederick Douglass to Martin Luther King Jr. From Chicago\u2019s Jacqueline Jackson to Chicago\u2019s Michelle Obama. And it burns on in young organizers today.<\/p>\n

The warning is clear: freedom and equality are fragile, and gains can be rolled back. Today, both are under attack again \u2014 with democracy itself on the line, racial equality undermined, and immigrants targeted with open hostility.<\/p>\n

The charge is clearer still: if my great-great-great-grandfather could bet on freedom and equality in 1864 while Petersburg burned \u2014 and my father\u2019s young ancestor could join his father and brothers in arms at Lexington \u2014 surely we can fight for freedom and equality in our own time.<\/p>\n

Ben Jealous is a former national president of the NAACP and a professor of practice at the University of Pennsylvania.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Revolution promised freedom. Reconstruction promised equality. Neither fight is finished. By Ben Jealous In my house, two legacies face each other. On one wall hangs a reproduction of The Spirit of \u201976, painted by my cousin Archibald M. Willard for the nation\u2019s hundredth birthday. The central drummer in that painting \u2014 the older man […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55,252],"tags":[],"wf_post_folders":[314],"class_list":["post-17393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial-opinion","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17393"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17393\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17394,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17393\/revisions\/17394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17393"},{"taxonomy":"wf_post_folders","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wf_post_folders?post=17393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}