Commemoration of the United States’ semiquincentennial — known as “America250” — is happening as Black people are reeling from rollbacks in civil rights advancements accumulated over decades.
That’s why for Ashley Ruff, Fourth of July activities should be rooted in exposing real American history, one in which African Americans, much more than others, always had to rage against a system hellbent on relegating them to second-class citizenship.
“When you have all that history, you learn it from your family,” said Ruff, a millennial who lives in Ward 7. “I was learning about civil rights. My grandmother was pregnant [with my mother] when Martin Luther King was writing his letter from Birmingham. These are stories that were passed on to me, so I understand the importance of voting. I understand the importance of being free.”
Ruff, a lifelong Ward 7 resident who currently serves as an advisory neighborhood commissioner of Single-Member District 7F02, recounted an upbringing where, in addition to the local newspaper and evening broadcasts, she had the wisdom of elders who told stories about life in the Jim Crow south.
“All of them used to teach us about how they ran from [Birmingham segregationist] Bull Connor,” Ruff told The Informer. “They’re just folks from Alabama… It took a lot for my grandmother to deal with, because at one point in their life, they weren’t free, but they worked their land. They had their own chickens, cheese, everything. A lot of people don’t have that stuff anymore.”
Decades later, Ruff carries on that legacy while living in one of several District communities that has been under federal occupation. As expected for large-scale celebrations, federal-local law enforcement cooperation will continue during a weekend that includes: the Fourth of July Capital Hill Parade, the 60th annual Palisades Parade, and the Great American State Fair.
Ruff told The Informer that, in addition to Homeland Security Investigations personnel, she and her neighbors east of the Anacostia River continue to fall victim to other intruders — like Drs. Rodney and Adonica Howard-Browne, the white evangelical leaders of Revival Ministries International who, as part of 250th anniversary festivities, conducted what was advertised as a food and toiletry giveaway at Ballou High School last weekend.
“Their food was expired. They gave a box of crackers to us that was from 2018,” Ruff told The Informer. “One of the backdrops they had on stage was the 250th anniversary of America. Come to find out these people had Republican signs. The only thing that probably was worth something to everybody was some toiletry kits and toilet paper.”
For Ruff, this level of what she called exploitation started long before Trump came back to office. The onus, she said, falls on majority-Black communities that have to pride in their history as they unite around improving their quality of life.
“How can you enjoy 250 years here in the District when we don’t even appreciate our own communities?” Ruff said. “We should be celebrating our history here in the District. We should be celebrating Benjamin Banneker.”
One Local Leader Reflects on a Struggle to Make America Fulfill Its Promise
July 4 will mark 250 years since members of what was then the 13 colonies declared independence from the British empire. Despite Crispus Attucks, a Black man, shedding first blood for the cause, and thousands more like him holding up the mantle of freedom, a significant portion of the Black U.S. population would remain in shackles for nearly 90 more years.
While the Declaration of Independence — the document outlining colonists’ grievances against King George II — touched on his abuse of royal power and disregard for the law, it didn’t directly indict the British crown’s perpetuation of the slave trade, due to Thomas Jefferon’s deferece to Continental Congress delegates representing Georgia, South Carolina, and parts of the north.
Years after learning this factoid, D.C. resident and former Ward 8 D.C. State Board of Education member Markus Batchelor continues to reflect on what he calls the unfinished product of democracy.
“It reveals that contradiction over slavery and American freedom was embedded in the nation’s founding before the ink on the Declaration was even dry,” Batchelor told The Informer. “I don’t think this diminishes the ideals of the Declaration. If anything, it challenges us to separate America’s aspirations from its actions.”
For the better part of his adult life, Batchelor has served in various leadership roles— oftentimes under the tutelage of veteran organizers. As he explained to The Informer, and even wrote about earlier this year, studying history allows for a patient and scientific approach to changemaking.
“We celebrate the promise that ‘all men are created equal,’ but we also have to acknowledge that many of the founders chose political expediency over fully embracing those principles,” Batchelor said. “Understanding that tension doesn’t weaken patriotism— it deepens it. America has always been a nation striving to live up to its own ideals, and every generation has been called to close the gap between promise and practice.”
That fight, Batchelor pointed out, continues today as he and other District residents face a Trump White House that, as of late, has been antagonistic to Ward 4 D.C. council member and Democratic nominee for D.C. mayor, Janeese Lewis George.
“The struggle for freedom didn’t end in 1776, 1865, or 1965,” Batchelor told The Informer. “It continues in the fight for voting rights, equal opportunity, and full democratic representation. “There’s no greater contradiction than celebrating American democracy in the nation’s capital while more than 700,000 D.C. residents are denied full voting representation in Congress.”
In the countdown to July 4, Batchelor has a mandate to those observing a milestone in American history. “America250 should be more than a commemoration,” he said. “It should be a call to finish the work of building a democracy that truly includes everyone.”
D.C.’s Pan-African Community Shapes an Alternative Universe
As local Pan-African leader Thea Browne-Dennis noted, an attitude, like that which permeated the Continental Congress at the signing of the Declaration of Independence, has persisted throughout much of American history and into the present day.
“It’s not a surprise to the Black community,” said Browne-Dennis, lead coordinator of the annual D.C. Pan-African Festival. “We’re not like crazy up in arms because this is something that we’ve dealt with on a daily basis: microagressions, stereotypes, and policies that make our lives difficult. It doesn’t seem like you could even vote it out. That mentality is across the board, even in the Democratic Party.”
In the two weeks before Fourth of July festivities, Browne-Dennis and other members of D.C.’s Pan-African community came together in celebration of a global African identity that she pointed out as being centuries older than America. As hypernationalism and xenophobia proliferates among African Americans, Caribbeans, and continental Africans, Browne-Dennis posits Pan-Africanism as the great unifier for a people stuck behind enemy walls.
“There are systematic ways in which Pan-Africanism is sabotaged,” Browne-Dennis told The Informer. “Colonization in Africa has affected the togetherness that Pan-Africanism represents, and, especially with the younger generation, we are starting to recognize those specific methods of separation, and we have to do more work to see in our commonalities.”
With the second iteration of the Trump administration making clear what several Pan-Africanists have always known, Browne-Dennis also said that Pan-African leaders and organizers must do their part to engage segments of the Black population standing outside of the insular community.
“There are times when we as a Pan-African community work in a bubble,” Browne-Dennis told The Informer. “We get comfortable in our jobs, our homes and in our ability to travel to and from the Caribbean, Africa, and other places. We have lost touch a little bit with the communities that we really should be serving more”
In the spirit of reversing that trend, Browne-Dennis, for the fourth consecutive year, organized the D.C. Pan-African Festival in Lansburgh Park, a Southwest landmark constructed during the 1964 urban renewal project that displaced tens of thousands of African Americans.
For six hours on the afternoon of June 27, hundreds of people enjoyed music, dancing, vendors, and words of affirmation. Iya Bashea Imana, co-founder of Wilson-Baker Academy, served as mistress of ceremonies of a program that started with a drum call and pouring of libation by Nana Malaya Rucker-Oparabea.
Other moments, as Browne-Dennis noted, included a singing of “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” the Black National Anthem, along with double dutch, interactive movement coordinated by ASA! Fitness, and a performance by Bomani Armah. Those who took to the podium were: Queen Laureen Butler of UNIA-ACL Woodson Banneker Jackson Bey Division 330, Dr. Kelechi Egwim of APPEAL, Inc., and Imamu Kuumba of the Leadership Council for Pan-African Nationalism, a sponsor of the D.C. Pan-African Festival.
“I remember there were more events and festivals that were uplifting towards the Black community,” said Browne-Dennis, a Howard University alumna and District resident of more than 30 years. “They have slowly stopped either by permitting issues, or things being shut down because of off-handed gun violence or violence near the festivals. But it’s important to be able to see yourself in a beautiful light so that you can reflect on what you’re seeing in your community.”
Since President Donald J. Trump’s return to the White House last year, his administration has deployed National Guard troops to majority-Black cities and cajoled Caribbean nations into no longer supporting Cuba, all while restricting African immigration. In the midst of those developments, Browne-Dennis calls the D.C. Pan-African Festival a foundational step toward the collective liberation of African people living in the United States and beyond.
“This administration is showing that we cannot depend on these institutions that enslaved us to make sure that we’re okay,” Browne-Dennis told The Informer. “APPEAL is working on trying to have a credit union [because] we have to be more mindful of how we spend our money. It’s to just be more intentional so that we do support each other in ways other than moral support.”
An Elder Black Nationalist Continues His Call for Unity
Lifelong D.C. resident and veteran Black nationalist Dr. Kokayi Patterson said he carries out his role as an intergenerational bridge builder via involvement in Al-Malik Farrakhan’s Cease Fire Don’t Smoke the Brothers and Sisters, and his circulation of a Street Code– a document aimed at priming Black people for unity and self-preservation.
By the time Patterson spoke with The Informer, he had recruited 35 street code ambassadors to aid in the distribution of the document. He said his goal is to bring at least 100 into the fold by the end of the summer, and 500 within the next few months.
“Solidarity has always been at the front line for any movement in the past and any movement in the future,” Patterson said. “The development of that foundation has always been going on. It’s just crumbled at different points of time. It’s always under attack, so sometimes you cannot see it.”
Patterson, a citizen of the Provisional Government of the Republic of New Afrika, said that, as a youth, he learned firsthand about what the United States means to Black people. Like several others of his generation, he participated in the 1963 March on Washington and the riots that broke out after the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination five years later.
After an adolescence filled with poor schooling, hard drugs, alcohol, and near deadly encounters with the police, Patterson came into knowledge of self through engagement with Black Panther Party. He said exposure to the “Autobiography of Malcolm X” opened up his eyes to what can happen for Black people who organize independently of the U.S. system.
“I began to understand that the same struggle that we were involved with here is the same struggle that Black people are involved in all over the world,” Patterson told The Informer. “I got involved in the movement in 1970. I’m still involved in it today.”
Admittedly, Patterson didn’t realize that there were celebrations for the 250th anniversary of U.S. independence. He said that, for more than half a century, he’s separated himself from any practices that affirm allegiance to this country, all out of acknowledgement that Black people are still susceptible to the same forces he encountered as a youth.
“I watched different kinds of drugs come in and devastate our communities again,” said Patterson, an acupuncturist who’s worked with the likes of the late Mutulu Shakur. “We have to organize and be creative about putting together a communal approach to our issues, meaning we have to address the mind and physical health of our people.”
As young people across the U.S. stand up against the Trump administration, Patterson emphasized the importance of understanding that there’s nothing new under the sun.
“We’re not getting the kind…and quality of education that we need,” Patterson told The Informer. “They control the product of what comes out of these schools to fit these puzzles that America has set up for folks to fall right into place. Nothing has changed, and we need to wake up and recognize that.”
