The Ongoing Struggle for Equality's Promise
The proposition hangs in the air still. That one, drafted in Philadelphia heat: all men are created equal. We recite it now like catechism, forgetting how the words exploded onto a world ordered by blood and crown. A radical utterance, yes. An act of faith scribbled onto parchment while men were bought and sold down by the docks, while nations lived on the land beyond the settlements, while half the human race remained legal non-persons. The dissonance was baked in from the start. The promise universal, the application viciously particular.
One learns to live with the crack in the foundation. Or rather, the nation learned, uneasily. The dissonance festered. It split the house. It spilled blood in fields from Manassas to Selma. The Civil War settled nothing finally, only made the contours of the lie starker. The Civil Rights Movement clawed at the edifice, chipping away mortar. Always the proposition was contested territory, fought over clause …
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