Footnotes by Jemar Tisby

If this piece helps you see ideological throughlines clearly, share it with someone who still thinks 1926 is ancient history, and subscribe to Footnotes so you get the true story every week. On the Fourth of July, the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, hate once again marched in the nation’s capital. A white nationalist group called Patriot Front took to the streets wearing white masks and sunglasses.

From the week before Juneteenth to today, I have published 10 articles and podcasts related to America 250. All for free. But this work is costly, and I need your support. Become a paid subscriber today. Anniversaries are never just celebrations. They are arguments about the past and identity. They tell us who we were, who we are, and who we must become.

I’m connecting the past to the present using my training as an academic historian. This is my commitment to truth. I can’t face this onslaught of misinformation alone. Become a paid subscriber today. In 1976, President Gerald R. Ford was the first president to officially recognize Black History Month in a written statement. He did this to commemorate the nation’s 200th anniversary. Fifty years later, President Donald J. Trump is whitewashing Black history in an attempt to Make America Great Again.

Right now, curricula across this country are being rewritten to erase exactly the tension Douglass named in 1852. Subscribe and make sure this history does not get edited out from under you. The following is an adaptation from a teach-in I do on “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” Frederick Douglass’s 1852 address is remembered for its fire. Rochester’s Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society had invited him to speak, and he did not spare them from the truth.

History and literature dance in the article below. If you appreciate both, then support this kind of interdisciplinary discourse by becoming a paid subscriber today. As we approach the annual Fourth of July celebration and the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we should reflect on James Baldwin’s words about patriotism. Baldwin shows that true love tells the truth. Love for one’s country—patriotism—is proven by the willingness to be honest about it.

The next time someone tells you America was founded as a Christian nation, you should be able to answer from history, not just instinct. To support history with receipts become a paid subscriber today. It is the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, and one message keeps showing up everywhere this anniversary year: the United States was founded as a Christian nation. But was it, though? The honest answer is not a flat yes or no. It depends on what you mean.

If you want more pieces like this reading the documents most people skip or never knew existed and connecting them to the 250th anniversary, become a paid subscriber today. This year, the country turns 250. We’ll hear about the founding documents—the Declaration, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights. We’ll hear almost nothing about the other one. On March 11, 1861, in Montgomery, Alabama, seven slaveholding states signed into being the Constitution of the Confederate States of America.

Here’s a simple way to honor Juneteenth. Invest in my work as a historian of race in the U.S. I do the truth-telling that confronts white Christian nationalist myths. You can support. This Juneteenth, become a paid subscriber. Two anniversaries fall just weeks apart this summer, and they ask two very different questions. America 250 asks: how great have we been? Juneteenth asks: how free are we, really? That second question doesn’t have a comfortable answer.

Every week on Footnotes, I do the history so you don't have to take the whitewashed version at face value. If that kind of work matters to you, become a paid subscriber today. Juneteenth and the Fourth of July. These events have always stood in relation and in tension. Juneteenth represents emancipation from race-based chattel slavery. The Fourth of July is supposed to represent liberty, but it occurred in the context of genocide, land theft, and slavery.

I name the links between racism and patriarchy—both past and present. If that’s the kind of insight you value, become a paid subscriber. Here are some facts about me and the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) I bet you didn’t know: I was baptized in an SBC church at the age of 8-years old. Al Mohler took me and a group of seminary administrators on a tour of his house in Louisville. I briefly enrolled in a PhD program at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (where Mohler is president). All true.