‘Happy birthday, America’

To the Editor,

“Happy birthday, America.” Those words are fresh in my mouth and my mind. This is my 77th Independence Day, and it is definitely the strangest. Back in the 1960s, in a nation divided by the Vietnam War, Independence Day brought conflict to my world. I graduated from law school in 1968. Attorney General Ramsey Clark was the graduation speaker. He had changed his opinion several months earlier and begun to oppose the war. The protestors and counter-protestors made it difficult for me to get into my graduation.

Cities were on fire. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated. Looters looted. Rioters rioted. Protestors protested. Then it all went away. Nothing changed. 

Now, 50 years later, we have protesters raising the same racial inequality issues. People of color are being killed for no reason. Still some looters. Still some rioters. Many fewer than before, but with the same result: detracting from the rightful purpose of the peaceful protesters.

And the question that hangs in the air is whether this time will be different. 244 years ago, Thomas Jefferson wrote these amazing words: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…”

It is now up to us to determine if those words actually mean what we hope Jefferson intended them to mean, and make them a reality for the first time in 244 years. Can we afford to do any less?

G. Guy Smith
Swarthmore