How early Black Americans co-opted the 4th of July

Like all symbols of American patriotism, the Fourth of July has meant different things in different times and places. In Memphis in the first decades after the Civil War, Brian D. Page writes, it was a distinctly Black holiday. Many white Memphis residents associated the Fourth of July with the Confederacy’s defeat and the Black soldiers there. In 1869, one local paper reported that the holiday was celebrated “only by our Germans and our colored citizens.” (Livia Gershon, Wikimedia Commons)

Mr. Page writes, “On July 4, 1866, African Americans in Memphis, led by the Sons of Ham, a recently established mutual aid association, organized a parade and picnic to celebrate the birth of American independence, thus beginning a long and important cultural tradition within the African-American community. They celebrated this national holiday in the shadows of the horrendous Memphis massacre of May 1, 1866, which had resulted in the death of forty-six African Americans.

“This atrocity did not curb African Americans’ assertions of freedom, or their affirmation of their rights within the social and political landscape of this southern city. for the first generation after emancipation, celebrating the Fourth of July became a rite of identity, history, and memory for African Americans, who made the day their own unique event in contrast to the general indifference shown by local whites to the holiday…But for Memphis African Americans, the Fourth of July once again became a far off promise of equality as the words of the Declaration of Independence were voiced, but proved to have little meaning, in the Jim Crow South,” Page adds.

Frederick Douglass, the famous abolitionist wrote words that still resonate today: “Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us?”

The second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence states: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” This 4th of July, our fight for those rights are even more precious.

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