On June 7, 1776, during the Second Continental Congress, Virginia Delegate Richard Henry Lee moved to declare Independence from Great Britain, a motion which read (in part):
Resolved: That these united colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.
Lee is my first cousin, seven times removed. See Migrations: Our Family’s Immigrations to America, From All Over the World by J.E. Smith, III, p. 282.
Lee’s motion was forwarded to the committee consisting of John Adams of Massachusetts, Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, Robert R. Livingston of New York, and Roger Sherman of Connecticut.
“Jefferson largely wrote the Declaration of Independence in isolation between June 11, 1776, and June 28, 1776, from the second floor of a three-story home he was renting at 700 Market Street in Philadelphia, now called the Declaration House and within walking distance of Independence Hall.[54] Considering Congress's busy schedule, Jefferson probably had limited time for writing over these 17 days, and he likely wrote his first draft quickly.”
On July 2, 1776, the Continental Congress approved Lee’s motion for American independence. History records that we Americans would celebrate not July 2 but July 4, the date the act was finalized and announced, as Independence Day. Some black Americans with long roots in this country are related to the Founding Fathers like Richard Henry Lee and Thomas Jefferson. My third cousin, Brenda, is a direct descendant of Jefferson and Sally Hemmings.
Two Virginians with black relations brought into being America. How right in a way. The color line has been a falsehood from the start.
Alexander Hamilton, aide de camp to His Excellency George Washington, led the final charge towards independence and victory at Yorktown in 1781. About 1/4 of the fighting soldiers at Yorktown were black men, including the mostly black First Rhode Island Regiment.
Washington made the call to “seize rebouts nine and ten with bayonets instead of pounding them slowly into submission with cannon.” Hamilton and Captain Stephen Olney led black fighting men in a race with fixed bayonets towards rebout ten, sprinting across a quarter-mile of landscape pocked and rutted from exploding shells.” Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow, p. 163. “The whole operation had consumed fewer than ten minutes.” Id. at p. 164. The taking of the two redoubts enabled a second parallel trench to be completed. The black soldiers played “a critical role in the assault.”
And that was the end of British resistance at Yorktown. Black soldiers under Hamilton, and Captain Olney, won American independence on the battlefield between October 14 and 16, 1781.
Conclusion: For Black Americans, American Independence came about by the courage and vision of white distant cousins in Independence Hall in 1776 and black courage under the cover of night in Yorktown in 1781. Even George Washington has distant black American second cousins, seven times removed. It is my hope that this July 4, we think of us as One People tied by blood and continental soldiers in black and white on the battlefield.
If we can perceive our common inheritance as Old Americans, perhaps the color line will fade away from view and a higher consciousness of us will be born.
Happy July 4th!