The highly anticipated documentary “The American Revolution,” produced by master storyteller Ken Burns and recently premiered on U.S. public television stations, provides an essential history lesson about the ironies, paradoxes and compromises that were necessary for the 13 colonies to secure their freedom.
But for those who prefer to blur the lines of truth about the Founding Fathers and white hegemony, this film may be a mind-blowing experience as it allows people of color — many of whom bled and died for a country that still treats them like second-class citizens — to have their say.
Ironically, while Thomas Jefferson’s famous statement regarding equality, found in the Declaration of Independence has become a moral standard and inspiration for liberation movements throughout the world, it has often been accompanied by a disclaimer.
Jefferson, a slave owner whose documents confirm had a long-standing relationship with an enslaved woman named Sally Hemings and fathered her six children, crafted an idea that has sparked revolutions in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and Europe. Here in the U.S., his words have fueled grassroots activists who braved the frontlines for the women’s suffrage movement and the Civil Rights Movement.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” he wrote.
Burns underscores the ugly reality of U.S. history, pointing out that Crispus Attucks was not the only Black person who fought and died for our country, and illustrates the heroic decision by African Americans who fought for both the British and the Continental Army on promises of freedom that were summarily broken.
While an estimated 25,000 Black people fought on the two sides during the eight-year fight for independence — after the British surrendered at Yorktown in 1781, and even before the official ending of the war with the signing of the Treaty of Paris in September 1783 — it was evident that freedom for American citizens was not to include African Americans.
In fact, immediately after the cannons were silenced and soldiers were allowed to return to their homes, then-General George Washington ordered that African Americans be held by troops in several locations, including New York City, until their owners could locate them and return them to slavery. Both Washington and Jefferson dispatched men to find their slaves and take them back to their prodigious plantations at Mount Vernon and Monticello.
One African American who fought for America, when asked if he would pursue the promise of financial compensation for his military service, said he only wanted one thing: his freedom.
But with dollar signs in their eyes and due to Americans’ selfish belief in Manifest Destiny, it would take centuries of civil unrest, human suffering at an unimaginable scale, and scores of deaths before the promises of the Founding Fathers and the guarantees of the Constitution were extended to African Americans and indigenous people.
This is American history – realistic and unredacted.