Race and Class Discourse from an Ivory Tower in Connecticut

Next year, the nation will celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the founding document of the United States. The American republic was founded based on an ideal that did not apply to everyone. The white men who drafted the Declaration did not intend for the words in the preamble - “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal” - to apply to women, Indigenous People, or African Americans. The civil rights revolution of the 1960s forced America to hold up a mirror to itself, one with the words of the preamble of the Declaration inscribed in translucent letters. Prior to the 1960s, if you were Native American, African American, Latino, or LGBTQ, you struggled to see yourself in the mirror. However, when most white Americans – especially white men – held up the mirror, the only face they recognized was their own. The activists who protested during the 1960s were determined to make the country live up to its founding creed, to bring i...