We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America…2
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects on directly, affects all indirectly…One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at the lunch counters, they were in reality standing up for what is best in the American Dream and for the sacred values in our Judaeo-Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.” 3
If asked, a multitude of disenfranchised Black Americans would reject the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States; dismiss them out of hand as not germane to them and their condition. I have been told on numerous occasions that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States were not written with Blacks in mind, and therefore they should not be embraced and the spirit, nor letter of their words held in high regard. That since they were not written with Black Americans in mind, but instead (by-and-large) for the white male, we should not claim ownership of them and their lofty promises of liberty and equality for all, and those natural God given rights of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.
To these arguments I have always demurred, stating my belief that once freed from the bonds of slavery, the Black American under the umbrella of full citizenship in the Republic, did and should lay claim to the laws of this land, as one of “We The People.” That to think and act otherwise is not realize the full measure of our collective power and responsibility to not only ourselves, but to our children and the memories of so many who sacrificed to bring us to this point in our history. No, racism is not dead—far from it—but its sting is made far more endurable by the devotion and leadership of those so easily forgotten and is some case gave the full measure of their devotion to the cause of Civil Rights!
