The Founding Fathers That Excluded You, And Your Great Granny.

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Narrated by the Author or Marcus and Lucas A.

As a child, experiencing the fourth of July was amazing. I’m a summer baby. I knew once the fireworks were over, my birthday was soon to follow. The fourth has always been a time my family came together. I’m the one that usually gets the desserts and the Lime-A-Ritas’. As a child, my mother used to dress all my siblings in matching red, white, and blue clothes.

Here’s a quick breakdown of my siblings, it’s seven of us, my two older brothers Ty and Baby, and “The Small Five”, which consist of me, Tay, Tee, Narda, and Shelby. My mother used to dress Tay and me in these FUBU jerseys that were fye for the time; she dresses my sisters in red, white, and blue shirts and denim blue jeans.

No lie, the best part to me was eating grilled hamburgers and glizzies, pause, only stating facts. I might have been greedy growing up. The icing on the cake for me was that at night time, my big brothers and my stepfather, David, used to light fireworks. The Small Five was usually given sprinklers. I didn’t think too much about the day or why we were celebrating it. I just enjoyed the perks every summer.

I remember reading in the history books about George Washington, Andrew Jackson, James Madison, and a few more. They were referred to as The Founding Fathers. In most of my classes, I probably wasn’t paying too much attention, but in this class, our teacher would make us read out loud in a circle, so I had to make sure I knew what I was reading. I swear my stuttering was the worst, and it always seems like I had the paragraph with the biggest words. After reading about them I thought, wow, these Captain Crunch looking dudes are alright with me. Doing the Pledge of Allegiance suddenly made sense to me.

Fast-forwarding past my middle school and high school days, I was kinda a loner. I didn’t talk or do much socially. In my early 20s I was suggested a book by a great friend named “Chance”. It was called “Know Thyself” by Dr. Na’im Akbar. I credit this book as one of the books that changed me as a person. I recommend giving this book a read, regardless of your race. It started to unlearn skewed truth and relearn the truths about my history. It was always strange to me that the school history books only had a few pages about black history and reserved the shortest month in the year to talk about it.

The Founding Fathers

The tale about The Founding Fathers forming may be known to some, but surely not to all. Americans celebrate Independence Day, also known as the 4th of July, because on that day 56 congressional representatives signed the Declaration of Independence. Long story short, The Declaration of Independence was an important step towards moving away from Great Britain’s rule.

At the time, Britain and America shared land. On March 5th, 1770, British soldiers were patrolling the streets of Boston, Massachusetts, openly threatening the citizens. The colonist was fed up with seeing them and started to throw stones and yell disrespectful remarks towards the British soldiers.

The commanding officers then told the soldier to attack back at colonists. The incident resulted in many deaths and injuries. The Provincial Assembly made up of important colonists, then called a meeting to address the attack. Two of the members, John Hancock and Samuel Adams, spoke up and declared the British soldiers had to leave from Boston. Samuel Adams called the Governor, and the soldier was removed.

Two years later, after the incident, Adams presented to the Assembly that a correspondence committee needed to be established among the colonies “for the purpose of friendly cooperation for the betterment of the colonies of British America”. The committee was then formed.

The Governor of Massachusetts heard about it and sent a messenger to Adams and told him, in my (brzksmly) words, to stop with all this mess, we might have some coins for you but you gotta chill, like now, and if you don’t we gonna have a problem. Adams at this point could’ve folded, but he didn’t. Adam told him he was straight and put respect for him and his people.

The Governor was HEATED!! He put the word out that Adams and Hancock are to be condign to punishment. Basically, it’s on sight. Hearing the threat, Adams called a meeting of the committee and told all the attendees, we need to do something about this now. No one is leaving this room until we decided on a congress. They decided for the First Continental Congress, be held on September 5th, 1774. One of the members, Thomas Jefferson, created a “Summary View of Rights of British America” to present.

Two years later on June, 7th,1776, at a Continental Congress meeting Richard Henry Lee addressed the chair and said “I make the motion that these United Colonies are, and right ought to be free and independent states, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown and all political connection between the state of Great Britain..”.

This started the process of creating the Declaration of Independence. The draft was made and read on June 28th,1776, discussed and modified the following days up to July, 4th,1776. The very same day, it was signed and made official. George Washington then informed his troops that they are free and independent from Britain. He was not there to sign the document the American Revolutionary War was forming.

Now, while knowing a bit about the forming of The Founding Fathers, here are more things that might spark your interest. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson names probably sound familiar, but their faces are surely recognizable. These men are on the money we spend. The Declaration of Independence states:

“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.”

Contrarily, to their own writing, together these three men owned over a thousand slaves still after the Declaration of Independence and remained slave owners till their death. It would take our 16th president, Abraham Lincoln, that you might recognize from the five-dollar bill and the copper penny, to abolish slavery. On January 1st, 1863, Lincoln rolled out the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed millions of slaves.

Almost forgot to keep it 100. I can’t forget Benjamin; he too helped write the Declaration of Independence with Jefferson and owned slaves.

I’m here to inform you first and foremost; applied knowledge is power. Know your history, teach the history.

– athour notes