Back in the day, a Fourth of July celebration without a reading of the Declaration of Independence would be as unsatisfying as a barbecue without potato salad made with Grandma’s recipe.
Hallowed documents are like side dishes. Their impact requires continuity. But last year, National Public Radio skipped its traditional broadcast of the Declaration. Instead, NPR offered a panel discussion of the meaning of “equality” when the political winds blow rightward. Yet that is the type of question for which a public reading of the founding document has provided an opportunity to see issues of the day in historical context.
The Declaration of Independence was truly revolutionary. Before Thomas Jefferson and others wrote King George III’s walking papers, monarchs were sent packing by swords and muskets. The Declaration did so with words and logic. It reads like a grand jury indictment. That makes it required reading in this unprecedented moment when a former president of the United States stands indicted by a federal court.
Though dating from different centuries, some paragraphs of the Declaration and the indictment could be taken for near carbon copies:
“(King George) has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.”
“Trump attempted to persuade Trump Attorney 1 to hide and conceal documents from a federal grand jury … in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Sections 1512(b)(2)(A) and 2.”
The Declaration of Independence set lofty goals for the nation it established: “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.”
Jefferson and his fellow authors also created a standard for the former Colonies’ performance reviews:
“That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.”
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Those who signed the Declaration flunked King George. Yet if they were candid about a self-evaluation, they couldn’t give themselves an A. Despite his philosophic commitment to human equality, Jefferson owned enslaved people. So, too, did other Founding Fathers. On the run-up to the Civil War, Southern slaveholders lampooned the abolitionists’ hypocrisy.
When the South formed the Confederacy, its constitution provided that no “law denying or impairing the right of property in … slaves shall be passed.” Yet that freed Fourth of July orators to speak to the Declaration’s virtues without fear of having to duck questions about its limitations.
In 1836, Chicago’s reading was performed in conjunction with the digging of the first shovelfuls of the Illinois and Michigan Canal that promised the city’s prosperity.
In 1897, professor R.L. Cumnock read the Declaration during Evanston’s Independence Day festivities, the Tribune reported. The celebration also featured footraces and a greased pig chase.
In 1926, Anton Cermak, then the president of the Cook County Board, urged citizens to listen to readings of the Declaration in the county’s forest preserves. “If not publicly, it should be read by the head of the family to all the children,” the Tribune summarized Cermak as saying.
This year, hearing the Declaration recited could provide emotional insurance for the rocky road ahead. Some who welcomed Trump’s indictment may grow weary. The trial is set for Aug. 14, but he is a master of stalling, distorting facts and cruelly attacking opponents. He could win a second term.
To prevent the depression that prospect could bring, listen attentively to the drum roll of King George’s offenses with which the Declaration concludes:
“He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.”
“He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.”
“In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble of terms.”
Finally, Jefferson and his co-authors rendered the verdict:
“A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.”
And having read or heard that, recall that this Fourth of July won’t be the first time that the Declaration’s proclamation of America’s virtues required an act of faith.
When the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke at the 1963 March on Washington, America was segregated. Months earlier, police set attack dogs on Black people asserting their civil rights in Birmingham, Alabama. Yet King stuck to the message he’d preached in churches for years and from a cell in Birmingham’s jail.
“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed,” King said. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”
Ron Grossman is a Tribune reporter.
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