This year, the Fourth of July celebration marks the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding. There is much to celebrate, but for me, it’s time to reconsider what to celebrate.

Tradition calls for celebrating independence and freedom from tyranny. For those who follow the news, or who study U.S. history, it seems almost disingenuous to wave a flag and cheer for independence when the nation used its freedom from one empire to start its own and has offered freedom for some, tyranny for others, here and abroad, ever since.

What we could celebrate and honor are those efforts throughout our history to challenge injustice and right the country’s wrongs:

• Resistance to enslavement. From the beginning of the chattel slave system in the Western Hemisphere, revolts by enslaved people and escapes from bondage disrupted the efforts of the owner class to control Black people.
• Abolition. The effort to undo the legal and economic structure of enslavement helped provoke the showdown of the Civil War, which disrupted the chattel slavery system but did not end racist legal and economic structures. Juneteenth is a moment chosen by Black people to celebrate their freedom, culture and power (to borrow You Matter 2’s Juneteenth slogan). The movement is not a relic. It continues today.
• Civil Rights. In the popular imagination, the movement is often reduced to roughly a decade of activism culminating in a set of landmark court opinions and new laws that ended Jim Crow segregation. It started earlier, lasted longer and was broader (nationwide as opposed to just the South) and bloodier than most people might assume. It seems to me it was almost a second Civil War that was fought in the streets rather than by armies in the fields. And many of the gains made during the 1950s and 1960s have been unraveled during the Trump years. Celebrating the movement’s achievements is more important than ever if we want to rebuild and exceed them.

Black Power. The evolution of the Civil Rights Movement into an even more assertive activism that kept the pressure on those in power who hoped to keep Black people submissive and subordinate. I’m afraid I’m not well informed about this part of the movement, but I aim to learn more.

Black Lives Matter. This resurgence of activism in response to violence against Black people was met with the usual backlash, but it resulted in some reforms and kept the subject of racial violence and persistent injustice on the nation’s radar.

There are more, including (but not limited to):

• American Indian Movement.
• Women’s Suffrage.
• Women’s Liberation.
• Pride.
• Labor Rights.
• Disability Rights.
• Immigrant Rights.

This Fourth of July, I plan to celebrate America’s unquenchable resistance to America’s tyranny.