Writer Mitchell S. Jackson says loving America means telling the truth about its past, even when its uncomfortable. He reflects on the country’s 250th birthday.
DON GONYEA, HOST:
This weekend, we’re marking 250 years of America’s independence. But as the new nation celebrated its freedom, about a fifth of its population was still enslaved. Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Mitchell S. Jackson is descended from those people. And like many Americans, he’s thinking about how to mark this day. From Jackson’s hometown of Portland, Oregon, Deena Prichep reports.
DEENA PRICHEP, BYLINE: Some of Mitchell S. Jackson’s fondest childhood memories are of the Fourth of July.
MITCHELL S JACKSON: My mother would always buy me an outfit that had a red, white and blue color scheme. And it was joyous, you know, to don those colors.
PRICHEP: He loved the gatherings, the barbecue, the sparklers. But as he grew up, Jackson learned more about the history of this country and his own state, whose very constitution said Black people could not live there.
JACKSON: Oregon’s founding principles are, we don’t want you here. So how could you celebrate this without acknowledging that paradox?
PRICHEP: These paradoxes are something Jackson deeply understands. When we talked, he was staying at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, just a few blocks from the bookstore where he gave the first reading of his novel based on the poverty and addiction in his own family, and less than a mile from the courthouse where, at 21-years-old, he was charged with distributing crack cocaine and possessing an illegal gun. He served over a year in prison.
JACKSON: I lost my right to vote before I was – I ever voted, before it ever dawned on me that my suffrage was important. And I would say that that is an American project, that a young Black boy loses his right to vote.
PRICHEP: And not every state lets you get your vote back. Black Americans are incarcerated at nearly five times the rate of white Americans, according to the ACLU. There are entire states where more than 10% of the Black population cannot vote because of this. Jackson says these inequalities, historical and modern, call into question the very anniversary we’re celebrating.
JACKSON: So when I hear 250, I know that that’s a false number, right?
PRICHEP: Jackson says if we really want to celebrate freedom, we can’t go back more than 160 years. That’s when the 14th Amendment granted everyone equal protection under the law. Or maybe just over 60 years to the Civil Rights Act, which outlawed segregation, and the Voting Rights Act, which reduced racial barriers to voting.
JACKSON: How can we count 250? It’s almost hostile to a Black American to be forced to celebrate this mythology. But I don’t know another place.
PRICHEP: America is home. And on its big birthday, Jackson feels called to understand it. He spent the Fourth in Montgomery, Alabama, at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, which honors the victims of lynching.
JACKSON: If you love something, you’re also critical of it. You don’t just love it blindly, or I hope you don’t just love it blindly. So if you truly love America, then you got to tell the truth about America.
PRICHEP: Which means learning its history – Jackson wants people to read the Declaration of Independence and talk about it or read Frederick Douglass’ “What To The Slave Is The Fourth Of July,” which he quotes.
JACKSON: “The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you, not by me. The Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice. I must mourn.”
PRICHEP: Jackson says there are ways for Black Americans to make the Fourth of July and America itself their own. But it’s a group project of understanding who we are and who we’ve been and hopefully who we can become. For NPR News, I’m Deena Prichep in Portland, Oregon.
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