Black bodies in national celebrations exposed the lie of American freedom

Evidence

In 1834, during our national celebration of the Fourth of July, for example, African Americans who dared to join the activities were attacked, as their mere presence challenged the story of America. How could America be celebrated as a bastion of freedom when the very bodies of black folk suggested otherwise? … We don’t talk much about the Trail of Tears, the forced removal of Native Americans from their lands as a result of the Indian Removal Act of 1830, or about the evil of lynching (between 1887 and 1906, an African American was lynched in the South every four days). — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black, 126

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Postwar Paris offered black Americans freedom and respect absent at home — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 548