ALBANY — On July 4, 1776, the Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, which famously pronounced the nascent country's ideals included the belief "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."
Speaking Saturday at the Stephen and Harriet Myers residence, which 80 years after the country's founding was part of the Underground Railroad movement to help the some 4 million Black people still enslaved in America find freedom, the Rev. Roxanne Booth said, "People of African descent were not included in the lofty words of the Declaration of Independence."
Booth, co-pastor of Riverview Baptist Church in Coeymans and an Africana studies professor at the University at Albany, added, "Those words and ideals did not include my ancestors." Further, she said, they did not include the abolitionist and orator Frederick Douglass, whose famed 1852 speech, "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?," has been the focal point of an annual Independence Day event at the Myers house on Livingston Avenue, headquarters of the 18-year-old Underground Railroad Education Center.
Douglass' fiery speech, delivered on July 5, 1852, to the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society, was a scathing indictment of the continuing practice of slavery in the United States.
Referring to the Declaration of Independence's assertion that "all men are created equal," Booth said, "The hypocrisy of that statement rang true for Douglass that day and rings true in the ears of so many today."
Booth's remarks interwove reflections on the contemporary relevance of Douglass' words with ideas from "The Third Reconstruction," a 2016 book by William J. Barber II. A North Carolina minister and activist, Barber founded the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for a Moral Revival, a social movement named after the original 1968 campaign founded by Martin Luther King Jr.
The first Reconstruction, in the final third of the 19th century, and the second, in the 1950s and 1960s, led to significant advances in civil rights for Black Americans, Booth told the audience on Saturday. The third began with the 2008 election of Barack Obama. But, she said, all three were met by significant political opposition and social backlash.
"The fight for equality and justice continues today," Booth said.
The Underground Railroad Education Center was founded in 2003, born from research into local efforts in the Underground Railroad by Paul and Mary Liz Stewart, who continue to run the center today. The center has led the ongoing restoration of the Myers residence, which it purchased in 2004.
"This place ... really epitomizes what history should be — bringing history into the community," said David Hochfelder, a history professor at UAlbany, director of the university's Public History Program and board member of the Underground Railroad Education Center.
Mayor Kathy Sheehan, another speaker at Saturday's event, acknowledged that longstanding racial bias and discrimination played a large role in the state of the impoverished neighborhood around the Myers residence. Sheehan vowed to address some of the problems with money from the American Rescue Plan. The federal relief funding is giving $350 billion to state and local governments to0 cover the costs of fighting the pandemic and offset the drop in tax revenues it caused. Albany is due to receive $80 million.
Although a city task force is still studying how to allocate the windfall, Sheehan said, "I am committed ... to investing in communities left behind and destroyed by practices of the past."
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For many, Independence Day didn't equate to freedom - Times Union
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