A brief thread if that’s okay. I’ve been thinking about the Founders and about the end of slavery and of Jim Crow. It’s in vogue these days to cast aspersions on the Founders as racist, etc. but I think that massively overlooks what they accomplished. They managed to throw off

2 the yoke of hundreds of years of monarchy, nobility, and feudalism, to create something the world had not seen in a long time - a democracy. If that seems less impressive to us today, it’s only because they were so successful that we’ve lost all memory of life in a system

3 where the kings and nobles ruled based on birthright. They are rightly celebrated. Now, about the end of slavery and Jim Crow - we should celebrate those who ended those systems just like we do the Founders. Because they stand firmly in the tradition of 1776. What could be

4 more American than a people rising up to throw off the chains of slavery and of inequality and to insist that they too are included in the words of the Declaration? I’m thinking of people like Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass. I see a direct line from them back to the

5 spirit of 1776. It’s the same thing. People yearning to be free. I think there is a way to teach American history that makes these connections which we are still to this day largely missing. We often make this separate category for “black history” which in reality is American

history. Patrick Henry’s words and Thomas Jefferson’s words are echoed in the lives of those who would not accept slavery or second class citizenship. It’s all the American story. Friday thoughts.