{"id":18216,"date":"2026-01-08T17:47:23","date_gmt":"2026-01-08T17:47:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/?p=18216"},"modified":"2026-01-08T17:47:23","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T17:47:23","slug":"get-ready-to-honor-americas-birthday-by-fighting-for-freedom-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/08\/get-ready-to-honor-americas-birthday-by-fighting-for-freedom-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Get Ready to Honor America\u2019s Birthday by Fighting for Freedom, Again"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"By Ben Jealous
\n<\/em><\/strong>Guest Column<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

America has a big birthday this year.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a hint: The celebration will not feel much like the last big one in 1976.<\/p>\n

I still believe our nation\u2019s best days are ahead. But our history\u2014and our headlines\u2014suggest we are facing a familiar test. Another fraught fight for freedom and democracy is already upon us.<\/p>\n

That, too, is part of a pattern.<\/p>\n

How America marks century anniversaries has looked different from how we mark the halfway points. The difference is not in the fireworks. It is whether we are expanding the idea of who belongs\u2014or shrinking it.<\/p>\n

In 1776, the colonies declared independence from a monarchy and made a radical claim: that all men are created equal.<\/p>\n

By 1826, that promise had narrowed, not widened.<\/p>\n

Slavery was more entrenched and brutal than at the founding. Congress outlawed the transatlantic slave trade in 1807, effective in 1808. But it did not weaken slavery. It intensified it. A vast internal slave trade tore families apart as enslaved people were sold further south to fuel cotton\u2019s explosive growth.<\/p>\n

The nation celebrated independence while perfecting a domestic machinery of human trafficking.<\/p>\n

Another fifty years brought a different moment.<\/p>\n

In July 1876, the centennial told a more hopeful story. The party of Lincoln remained in power. The constitutional amendments guaranteeing citizenship and voting rights were part of the national narrative. Federal troops still protected Black communities in the South. Much would change months later. But on the nation\u2019s birthday, Black America was living in an era defined by hard-won freedom.<\/p>\n

That pattern would repeat a century later.<\/p>\n

In 1976, the Bicentennial arrived in the midst of desegregation. The mood was reflective. Protest was understood as American. Reconstruction was no longer erased. The country celebrated what many called a second Reconstruction.<\/p>\n

But in 1926\u2014America\u2019s 150th birthday\u2014the pattern broke the other way.<\/p>\n

The nation was in the grip of xenophobic, antisemitic, and racist backlash. White supremacist organizations wielded real political power. Racial violence and intimidation were facts of daily life. Antisemitic conspiracy theories were mass-produced. Anti-Catholic campaigns targeted Irish, Italian, and eastern European immigrants.<\/p>\n

All of it was wrapped in the language of \u201c100 percent Americanism.\u201d<\/p>\n

Let me be clear how far this rot went. Henry Ford spread antisemitic conspiracies through the newspaper he owned. Black veterans feared wearing their uniforms in public. The Klan was ascendant on anti-immigrant hate. Mainstream newspapers depicted Catholic immigrants as inherently criminal and dangerous to American society.<\/p>\n

The sesquicentennial did not create these forces. It amplified them.<\/p>\n

Which brings us to now.<\/p>\n

If history is a guide, America\u2019s 250th birthday will feel more like 1926 than 1976. The same currents are visible: immigrants from historically Catholic nations cast as threats, racism on the rise, antisemitic tropes revived, Islamophobia inflamed.<\/p>\n

All in parallel. All dressed up as patriotism.<\/p>\n

But history offers more than warning. It offers instruction.<\/p>\n

In 1926, the civil rights movement did something harder and more powerful than protest alone. It organized the nation\u2019s conscience.<\/p>\n

Leaders claimed the ideals of the American Revolution not as nostalgia, but as goals the country was obligated to reach. They defined American patriotism as expanding freedom. They warned that those who would turn Americans into subjects\u2014through violence, exclusion, or fear\u2014were the real threat to the founding ideals. They called on their neighbors to build America up, not tear her down.<\/p>\n

That was not na\u00efvet\u00e9. It was strategy. It worked. Not overnight. But over time.<\/p>\n

Fifty years after 1926 came 1976. Fifty years hence, if the pattern holds, America can be in a better place.<\/p>\n

The question is not whether history bends. It is who does the bending.<\/p>\n

America\u2019s great birthdays do not measure how free we think we are. They measure how seriously we take the work undone. If we honor this birthday by recommitting to the fight for freedom\u2014by widening democracy, not shrinking it; by confronting hate, not tolerating it\u2014this celebration can become a hinge, not a warning.<\/p>\n

Because realizing America\u2019s promise is always the mission.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ben Jealous is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, former president of the NAACP, and a direct descendant of the youngest combatant at the Battle of Lexington and Concord.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Ben Jealous Guest Column America has a big birthday this year. Here\u2019s a hint: The celebration will not feel much like the last big one in 1976. I still believe our nation\u2019s best days are ahead. But our history\u2014and our headlines\u2014suggest we are facing a familiar test. Another fraught fight for freedom and democracy […]<\/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":[329],"class_list":["post-18216","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\/18216","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=18216"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18216\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18217,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18216\/revisions\/18217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18216"},{"taxonomy":"wf_post_folders","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wf_post_folders?post=18216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}