JULY 4th

July 4 is about independence at

the national level: dissolving the political bands that connect one

people to another, in the words

of the Declaration.

During the American Revolution,

the legal separation of the thirteen colonies from Great Britain in 1776.

On July 2, the Second Continental Congress voted to approve a 

resolution of independence that had been proposed in June by Richard Henry Lee of Virginia declaring

the United States independent from Great Britain's rule.

The Declaration of Independence,

a statement explaining this decision, had been prepared by a Committee

of Five, with Thomas Jefferson as

its principal author.

Congress debated and revised

the wording of the Declaration to remove its vigorous denunciation

of the slave trade, finally approving

it two days later on July 4.

Americans celebrated independence on July 4, the date shown on the

much-publicized Declaration of Independence, rather than on

July 2, the date the

resolution of independence

was approved

in a closed session

of Congress.



Juneteenth

Juneteenth (June 19th), by contrast,

is about individual freedom: breaking

the shackles of slavery, two years later.

Americans have often blurred these two events together, mostly by celebrating July 4 as though it’s about individual freedom for ALL.

In 1962, President John F. Kennedy described the Declaration as focused on “the individual liberty of one.” In 1986, President Ronald Reagan praised “the dream of freedom inaugurated in Independence Hall.”

But, the relationship between

July 4 and individual freedom is ambiguous. The Declaration of

Independence brought freedom of a sort to the American colonists. They were now citizens of their states, governing themselves.

However, it did nothing for the

half a million people deprived of freedom in a much graver sense,

the same people enslaved by

these American colonists.

Confronted with these facts, the two holidays are still complementary-- Juneteenth (though freed two years later) is the continuation of the struggle

for liberty that started with July 4.

Juneteenth, however, celebrates the conquest and destruction of those enslaver governments. It offers freedom to people enslaved by their own states, as the official end-of-slavery date.

Compliments of Willer Leveille'