The United States is 250 years old this year. And my alma mater, the University of Colorado, marks 150 years. There are a lot of celebrations on both fronts. Both institutions also share a common origin thread: African Americans were not welcomed at the founding in either place.
So, with apologies and attribution to Frederick Douglass and his July 5, 1852, speech, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” I will expound on his landmark oratory. Sadly, much of what he wrote back then is relevant today. My attempt here is to reframe his argument.
My subject is the American Dream, not as the popular fantasy dream, but as the living nightmare it is from the perspective of the African American. Like Douglass, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation – reflected also in my alma mater in Boulder – look worse to me in the year 2026, as it must have appeared to Douglass in 1852.
So, I will not be celebrating the nation’s independence. Africans were not citizens and were not regarded as human. We were no more valued than cattle. Juneteenth (June 19, 1865) is the occasion of my reverie. On that day, Union soldiers arrived in Galveston, Texas to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation, which had actually freed enslaved Blacks in the South two years earlier. While it made my freedom a possibility, many legal and cultural obstacles have remained over the ensuing years.
Likewise, I am sitting out the remembrance of CU-Boulder’s anniversary, instead paying tribute to Lucile Berkeley Buchanan Jones, the first African American to graduate from the campus back in 1918. CU officials refused to allow her to walk on stage to receive her degree at the graduation ceremony. An unnamed woman, declaring herself to be Buchanan Jones’s “partner,” handed Buchanan Jones her degree and disappeared. Buchanan Jones never went onstage at her own graduation ceremony and never returned to the University of Colorado. Her humiliation made my graduation a possibility, but many legal and cultural obstacles have remained over the ensuing years.
Whether we look to past declarations of independence of the founders, to the pronouncements of today’s leaders, or to those who yearn for a past greatness that never was, the conduct of the nation is still equally hideous and revolting.
“America is false to its past, false to its present, and solemnly commits itself to being false to its future,” Douglass said.
Like him, I mourn on this occasion of American independence for my people, who continue to rise despite attempts to hurt, to crush, and to diminish – “in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered,” in the name of a Constitution being ignored, a Bible being bastardized, an education system that whitewashes it history – I, like Douglass, call into question and denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate the mythology of White Supremacist Ideology as the great sin and shame of the United States.
On this point, Douglass did not equivocate. He did not excuse. He addressed those who said their actions regarding Africans “were just in (their) circumstance that he and his people failed to make a favorable argument to impress the public mind.”
His reply was the same as mine. What would be persuasive? To have me argue better? Denounce better? Protest better? March better? Boycott better? Blog better? Podcast better? Die better?
It should have been easy enough to affirm the equal personhood of the African in America, Douglass said. Is it not astonishing that now, like then, we are ploughing, planting, reaping, designing all manner of mechanical and technological tools, building houses, building infrastructure, building communities, reading, writing, working in offices and stores, as entrepreneurs, secretaries, lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators, sanitation workers, teachers, students, and as every imaginable occupation.
Now, like then, we are engaged in all manner of enterprises common to humans: living, moving, acting, thinking, planning, and being husbands, wives, and children. And yet, we are still called upon to prove that we are human in a society that celebrates our pain while simultaneously demonizing and monetizing our talents.
What, then, to the African American, is the 250th birthday, when, at the nation’s founding, our ancestors had no rights as citizens, no rights as humans, and were exploited in the fields for our labor, for profit?
What, then, to the African American, is the 150th anniversary of the University of Colorado, which in its very creation prohibited the presence of the African on its campus, in a city built on covenants that prohibited Blackness, and even when it didn’t, we were exploited on different fields for profit?
“Your celebrations are a sham,” Douglass said. “Your boasted liberty, your national greatness, swelling vanity, your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless. Your denunciations of tyrants, and your shouts of liberty and equality, all hollow mockery. Your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your solemnity, pomp and circumstance are mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy. The celebrations are a thin veil to cover up crimes, which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and horrific than are the people of these United States at this very hour.”
I would add that university fight songs and pledges given to graduating classes are just as meaningless.
As publicly declared in Project 2025, the determination today is to return the United States to segregation and exclusion. These actions render America’s so-called patriotism as fake, humanity as a base pretense, Christianity as a lie, and the education system as nothing more than hollow propaganda dressed up as intellectual discourse.
“They destroy your moral power abroad and corrupt your politicians at home,” Douglass said. “It is the antagonistic force in your government, the thing that disturbs and endangers your Union. It fetters your progress. It is the enemy of improvement. It is the deadly foe of education. It fosters pride. It breeds insolence. It breeds intolerance. It promotes vice. It shelters crime.”
And yet, in 2026, too many people cling to “patriotism” as if it were the anchor of all their hopes and dreams.
In 1865, Douglass said, “No nation can now shut itself up from the surrounding world, and trot round in the same old path of its founders without interference.” He warned that “long established customs of hurtful character that could formerly fence themselves in and do their evil work with social impunity” must come to an end.
I share his belief that knowledge confined to and enjoyed by the privileged few must end.
He declared that “walled societies had become unfashionable. Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners, making its path known. Oceans no longer divide, but link people together. Space is comparatively annihilated. Thoughts expressed on one side of the world are distinctly heard on the other. No abuse, no outrage, can now hide itself from the all-pervading light.”
In this era of social media, Douglass’ insights are truer now more than ever.
So, in the spirit of Frederick Douglass, I will drink a toast to those who earned their freedom from bondage, freeing us. And I will tip my hat to Buchanan Jones for her solitary journey, paving a way for us.
“Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented, of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country,” concluded Douglass. “There are forces in operation which must inevitably work the downfall of slavery.”
As a nation, today, we are that force. The question is: do we, as humans, have the will?
Editor’s note: James Michael Brodie, a University of Colorado graduate in English, is a Baltimore-based journalist, author, and activist. His books include Created Equal: The Lives and Ideas of Black American Innovators and Sweet Words So Brave: The Story of African American Literature. Brodie has also edited books on Black history, including The Story of Ruth, U.S. Civil Rights Trail: A Traveler’s Guide to the People, Places, and Events That Made the Movement, and was a contributing editor on Black and Golden: Fifty Years of the National Association of Black Journalists, 1975-2025.
