Independence Day Has Been a Time to Celebrate and to Think

01July 4, 1776 is the day the Continental Congress officially approved the Declaration of Independence.

02Celebrations began soon after with parades, public readings, and other events.

03Fighting in the nation's war for independence had already begun.

04But it was not until 1870 that the U.S.

05Congress passed a law to set July 4 as the National Observance of Independence Day.

06The law was updated in 1938 and again in 1941.

07Recently, another holiday to mark American independence was established by the U.S.

08Congress.

09The Juneteenth National Independence Day Act observes the end of slavery in the United States.

10The U.S.

11now officially observes 11 yearly holidays.

12State and local gatherings for Independence Day and other holidays are as old as the country itself.

13The Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Eric Foner said national holidays were a way to unify the nation after the Civil War.

14The Civil War consolidated national power in all sorts of ways, and national holidays are an illustration of that, he said.

15Some observers point out that Independence Day has been caught up in the country's divisions from a very early time.

16In the 1780s and 1790s, two political sides argued over who should get credit for writing the Declaration of Independence.

17The document famously declares that all men are created equal.

18The Democratic Republicans, led by Thomas Jefferson, thought that he should get the credit while supporters of a strong central government, the Federalists, said others helped too.

19In the years before the Civil War, black Americans were often not included in official July 4th events.

20Instead, they would celebrate on July 5th.

21The black writer Frederick Douglass gave his well-known speech, What to the Slave is the 4th of July, on July 5th, 1852, at an anti-slavery gathering in New York.

22There is discussion in the U.S.

23about whether it is right to observe July 4th as Independence Day.

24The debates involve questions about the country's beginnings and the ideas expressed in the Declaration of Independence.

25Some say the meaning of July 4th continues to change over time.

26They note that Franklin Roosevelt and George W.

27Bush were among the presidents who honored the military in Independence Day speeches.

28Last year, former President Donald Trump gave a speech at Mount Rushmore in the state of South Dakota.

29At the time, the coronavirus health crisis was intensifying, but there also were protests across the country.

30The Mount Rushmore Memorial includes huge sculptures of the faces of four American presidents, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt.

31Trump praised those leaders and criticized people who would damage or deface statues representing the nation's founders.

32At the time, then-presidential candidate Joe Biden released a video.

33In it, he said that the country had not yet lived up to the promise of equality.

34He noted that Jefferson was a slaveholder.

35America is no fairy tale, Biden said.

36It struggles with two forces, he said.

37The idea that all men and women, all people, are created equal, and the racism that has torn us apart.

38I'm Mario Ritter, Jr.

39I'm Mario Ritter, Jr.

40I'm Mario Ritter, Jr.

41I'm Mario Ritter, Jr.

42I'm Mario Ritter, Jr.

43I'm Mario Ritter, Jr.

44I'm Mario Ritter, Jr.