The ongoing work to ensure freedom in America

This column is part of a series written by seniors from the pilot senior seminar on American citizenship. The class is led by its students, whose interests and experiences are as diverse as their areas of study. These columns are their lessons.

On June 11, 1776, Thomas Jefferson began writing what would become one of the most important documents for our nation. In the final draft, which he submitted to the Continental Congress on June 28, the document proclaimed that as a nation we believed “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.”

We’ve all know about Jefferson and the 56 men who signed this Declaration and about their courage in creating this nation.
But few of us know about a man named Edward Coles, a Virginian born a generation later.

Coles, born to a slaveholding family, was greatly troubled by slavery, which he found at odds with the rights stipulated in our founding documents.

In July of 1814, Coles wrote to the former President Jefferson imploring him to speak out against the institution.

Jefferson replied a month later. Though he outlined how he felt blacks were an inferior race, Jefferson confided that he found slavery inconsistent with broad democratic principles. But Jefferson urged Coles to reconcile himself to the condition of his country. Change would happen slowly, eventually.

However, Edward Coles could not tolerate what he knew to be wrong, and he freed the black men and women who were deemed by Virginia and other Southern states to be his property. Coles moved to Illinois and later became Governor of the state.

So we learn that our independence day was July 4, 1776, but freedom did not sweep through our nation then. Jefferson and other founding fathers bought, owned and sold human beings.

Unfortunately freedom did not roll in even after Lincoln delivered the Emancipation Proclamation. Women could not vote until 1920, and nearly a century after the conclusion of the Civil War much of the nation was still racially segregated. There was religious discrimination against minorities in numerous communities. Many of these same problems persist today.

When we look to the profiles of Coles and the examples of others such as Levi Coffin, Frederick Douglass and the Grimke sisters, we learn that freedom is a fight and often an unpopular one. Freedom cannot be simply declared or proclaimed. It does not just roll in like a wave or rise like the sun.

Freedom is way of thinking, a way of acting, a manner of being. Freedom is a when dreams have a chance to be a reality for all citizens. Freedom is a struggle that has not yet been won but must never be abandoned. It is a shared responsibility for everyone in our nation.

So far I have discussed great men who strived to become leaders of a nation. Yet Ella Baker, civil and human rights activist, felt that the improvement of a society required the development of a strong populace, not simply strong leaders.

I am proud to be part of a nation that invests more power in its people than any country preceding it. I am tremendously grateful and indebted to the mothers, fathers, professors, presidents, soldiers, activists, county officials, librarians, farmers and many others who have, in their own way, protected freedom and fought so that it might reach all sectors of our society.

And as we look to the future, we have our work cut out for us. Child poverty rates in North Carolina are at 25 percent, blacks make up 44 percent of the prison population and 12 percent of the nation’s population, and a discriminatory amendment is up for vote in this state.

Freedom cannot simply be an abstraction. Insuring those unalienable rights requires a strong citizenry today, just as it did 200 years ago.