Stories of the 4th of July
I have always been drawn to stories of struggle. Hebrews 11:13 is a wonderful representation of the beauty of struggle. Speaking of Old Testament prophets it says,
These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.
To me the United States most compelling story is its contribution to the universal story of human freedom. So this year, as the 4th of July came around, I thought about what I could do to best honor the day. As part of a book club I re-read one of the most influential books of my adult life, “The Fire Next Time” by James Baldwin. I finished it yesterday, on the 4th and was struck by one of Baldwin’s closing images which I quote in its entirety below.
Of course I want my 4th of July celebrations to honor contributions the role the United States has played in advancing ideals of individual rights and personal freedoms. I especially want those celebrations to include the contributions of all Americans toward the cause of liberty and justice in this land. I certainly do not want those celebrations blind myself to the things that still need to change in the ongoing struggle of freedom. Especially if what needs to change is within me.
Now James Baldwin, speaking of the legacy of the American Negro in 1962.
This past, the Negro’s past, of rope, fire, torture, castration, infanticide, rape, death and humiliation; fear by day and night, fear a deep as the marrow of the bone; doubt that he was worthy of life, since everyone around him denied it; sorrow for his women, for his kinfolk, for his children, who needed his protection, and whom he could not protect; rage, hatred, and murder, hatred for white men so deep that it often turned against him and his own, and made all love, all trust, all joy impossible — this past, this endless struggle to achieve and reveal and confirm a human identity, human authority, yet contains, for all this horror, something very beautiful. I do not mean to be sentimental about suffering — enough is certainly as good as a feast — but people who cannot suffer can never grow up, can never discover who they are. That man who is forced each day to snatch his manhood, his identity, out of the fire of human cruelty that rages to destroy it knows, if he survives his effort, and even if he does not survive it, something about himself and human life that no school on earth — and, indeed, no church — can teach. He achieves his own authority, and that is unshakable. This is because in order to save his life, he is forced to look beneath appearances, to take nothing for granted, to hear the meaning behind the words. If one is continually surviving the worst that life can bring, one eventually ceases to be controlled by a fear of what life can bring; whatever it brings must be borne. And at this level of experience one’s bitterness begins to be palatable, and hatred becomes too heavy a sack to carry. The apprehension of life here so briefly and inadequately skecteched has been the experience of generations of Negros, and it helps to explain how they have endured and how they have been able too produce children of kindergarten age who can walk through mobs to get to school. It demands great force and great cunning continually to assault the mighty and indifferent fortress of white supremacy, as Negroes in this country have done so long. It demands great spiritual resilience not to hate the hater whose foot is on your neck, and an even greater miracle of perception and charity not to teach your child to hate. The Negro boys and girls who are facing mobs today come out of a long line of improbable aristocrats — the only genuine aristocrats this country has produced. I say “this country” because their frame of reference was totally American. They were hewing out of the mountain of white supremacy the stone of their individuality. I have great respect for that unsung army of black men and women who trudged down back lanes and entered back doors, saying “Yes, sir” and “No, Ma’am” in order to acquire a new roof for the schoolhouse, new books, a new chemistry lab, more beds for the dormitories, more dormitories. They did not like saying “Yes, sir” and “No, Ma’am,” but the country was in no hurry to educate Negroes, these black men and women knew that the job had to be done, and they put their pride in their pockets in order to do it. It is very hard to believe that they were in any way inferior to the white men and women who opened those back doors. It is very hard to believe that those men and women, raising their children, eating their greens, crying their curses, weeping their tears, singing their songs, making their love, as the sun rose, as the sun set, were in any way inferior to the white men and women who crept over to share these splendors after the sun went down. But we must avoid the European error; we must not suppose that, because the situation , the ways, the perceptions of black people so radically differed from those of whites, they were racially superior. I am proud of these people not because of their color but because of their intelligence and their spiritual force and their beauty. The country should be proud of them too, but, alas, not many people in this country even know of their existence. And the reason for this ignorance is that a knowledge of the role these people played — and play — in American life would reveal more about America to Americans than Americans wish to know.
The American Negro has the great advantage of having never believed that collection of myths to which white Americans cling: that their ancestors were all freedom-loving heros, that they were born in the greatest country the world has ever seen, or that Americans are invincible in battle and wise in peace, that Americans have always dealt honorably with Mexicans and Indians and all other neighbors or inferiors, that American men are the world’s most direct and virile, that American women are pure. Negros know far more about white Americans than that; it can almost be said, in fact, that they know about white Americans what parents — or, anyway, mothers — know about their children, and that they very often regard white Americans that way. And perhaps this attitude, held in spite of what they know and have endured, helps to explain why Negroes, on the whole, and until lately, have allowed themselves to feel so little hatred. The tendency has really been, insofar as this was possible, to dismiss white people as the slightly mad victims of their own brainwashing. One watched the lives they led. One could not be fooled about that; one watched the things they did and the excuses that they gave themselves, and if a white man was really in trouble, deep trouble, it was to the Negro’s door that he came. And one felt that if one had had that white man’s worldly advantages, one would never have become as bewildered and as joyless and as thoughtlessly cruel as he. The Negro came to the white man for a roof or for five dollars or for a letter to the judge; the white man came to the Negro for love. But he was not often able to give what he came seeking. The price was too high; he had too much to lose. And the Negro knew this, too. When one knows this about a man, it is impossible for one to hate him, but unless he becomes a man — becomes equal — it is also impossible for one to love him…
So what do you think? Do our folk tales, myths and histories serve to root out oppression and expand personal freedoms? Do they invite other freedom loving people to see themselves as comrades in our story? Do they teach how our story is part of a much larger human story about freedom? Because the universal struggle for freedom did not start with the founding fathers, nor did it end with the Revolutionary War.
