Plenty to celebrate on nation’s birthday

Charles Dumas

The Fourth of July is my favorite national holiday. It is the ritual of our country’s birthing, a cause to celebrate.

Of course, it hasn’t always been our country. At the time of its creation, several groups, including some of my ancestors, were not included as citizens or people.

So it is not the beginning that I celebrate, rather it is the courageous struggle of countless generations of ordinary people who dared to dream of a land where freedom was the rule, not the exception, and were willing to help evolve the promise of the American dream into a tangible reality.

I celebrate the original inhabitants of this land who still fight to maintain their identity and culture against the onslaught of foreigners.

I celebrate the millions of Africans who struggled against their chains and, when given the opportunity, helped to build a better land for their children.

I celebrate those who put their lives on the line to sustain a Union free of the tyranny of oppression. And those GIs in later generations who went abroad to free others from tyranny.

I celebrate my colleagues who stand for an hour every Wednesday to witness that we are still not free of war.

I celebrate the women who marched, and the few men who walked with them, so that all could be citizens no matter their gender.

I celebrate the union organizers who sometimes gave up their lives to ensure that all workers receive fair wages and the dignity to enjoy them.

I celebrate the immigrants who came to this country seeking an opportunity to make life better for themselves and their family.

I celebrate Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and the other artists who inspired us to believe that — this land is your land, this land is our land.

I celebrate the young and the old who work the polls and the streets to ensure that everyone has a vote and that their vote means something.

I celebrate the social workers, community organizers, teachers, clergy and all those who commit themselves to building a society where justice is more important than profit and that every man, woman and child has access to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The great American liberationist and resistance leader Frederick Douglass spoke at an African-American church in Bellefonte just before the Civil War. He did not like the Fourth of July. He thought a country founded on principles of freedom which kept a fifth of its population in chains was the height of hypocrisy. Just last month, Congress got around to agreeing with Douglass. It apologized for slavery and its progeny, racial discrimination.

I wish Douglass could have been around to witness that and other events of our time: the election of President Obama, the other ethnic minorities and women in the Cabinet, Congress and sitting on the Supreme Court. I think he might have had a change of heart and joined me in wishing Happy Birthday to America.

Charles Dumas is an associate professor in the School of Theatre at Penn State. He writes a biweekly column “Under the Baobob” and may be contacted through his blog, of the same name, on Centre Daily.com.