Spirit of '76: Civil Rights Continues Fight for Equality
- 11 years ago
Spirit of '76: Civil Rights Continues Fight for Equality
The Society of the Cincinnati - Georgetown Univeristy
A thread of continuity connects the American Revolution and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. It is the world shaking proclamation opening the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence-"that all men are created equal" and have an undeniable right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." It became the centerpiece of African American political beliefs for the next two centuries-not the way it was applied by the Founders, tolerating slavery, but in its full, universal application. Its spirit was invoked by Frederick Douglass and by Abraham Lincoln in the Gettysburg Address and was manifested in the Reconstruction Amendments to the Constitution, especially the 14th. Black protest organizations in the twentieth century cited it as the basis of their attacks on segregation and racial discrimination. Most famously, and convincingly, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., in his "I Have a Dream" speech at the March on Washington in 1963, tied the Declaration, the promise of natural rights from the days of the Revolution, to the demand for the full rights of all Americans.
The Society of the Cincinnati - Georgetown Univeristy
A thread of continuity connects the American Revolution and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. It is the world shaking proclamation opening the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence-"that all men are created equal" and have an undeniable right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." It became the centerpiece of African American political beliefs for the next two centuries-not the way it was applied by the Founders, tolerating slavery, but in its full, universal application. Its spirit was invoked by Frederick Douglass and by Abraham Lincoln in the Gettysburg Address and was manifested in the Reconstruction Amendments to the Constitution, especially the 14th. Black protest organizations in the twentieth century cited it as the basis of their attacks on segregation and racial discrimination. Most famously, and convincingly, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., in his "I Have a Dream" speech at the March on Washington in 1963, tied the Declaration, the promise of natural rights from the days of the Revolution, to the demand for the full rights of all Americans.