Trump-sponsored Freedom 250 events are overshadowing the bipartisan America 250’s celebration of our nation’s anniversary. The holiday’s politicization has spoiled the festivities for many Americans. Yet even before the Trump Administration’s coopting of July Fourth, celebrations of our nation’s founding call upon a complicated past.
Princeton University Professor Eddie Glaude sits down with April Ryan to investigate the true meaning — and application — of “We the People” in American history. The pair also discuss Frederick Douglass’s legacy and his role in the context of our country’s founding.
Eddie Glaude is a professor and author of America, USA: How Race Shadows the Nation’s Anniversaries. He is the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of African American studies at Princeton University.
The following transcript has been edited for formatting purposes
April Ryan
It’s always a special occasion anytime we have a chance to listen and speak with Eddie Glaude. None other than Princeton University professor, author, and pundit extraordinaire, Eddie Glaude. Eddie, we are in this moment of 250 years of celebration that all focuses back on 1776, the Declaration of Independence that was put in place in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Thomas Jefferson was the key architect, along with John Adams, Ben Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston. And this was about the break with the 13 colonies, breaking with British rule. King George of England. What does this moment mean to you? And is there some kind of irony in your mind when it comes to this July 4th holiday, looking back at 1776?
Eddie Glaude
First of all, it’s always a delight and honor to have an opportunity to to chop it up with you, April. Particularly in this moment with so much happening, in the backdrop of this July 4th, is that the ghost of the nation haunts. Um, it seems to me that what’s interesting about 1776, this moment which introduced the idea to the world that everyday, ordinary people could be self-governing. That that idea was shadowed by the ugliness of the transatlantic slave trade, by the horrors of of practices which led to extermination of large numbers of native peoples across the globe. So, the country was born or birth in contradiction. And I say this not as a way of kind of souring the moment. But, you know, America has always suffered from a kind of divided soul. That we imagine ourselves as a beacon of freedom and as a white republic. And you can’t hold those two things at once without contradiction or depositing a kind of madness at the heart of the country. So here we are in the 250th year, and that madness is in full view. Whether it’s Trump’s restoring truth and sanity to history, taking plaques off of the president’s house in Philadelphia that’s an attempt to redact his story. So we find ourselves in this moment with the ugly underbelly of America in full view as we celebrate its 250th year.
April Ryan
And as we talk about the 250th year, we are centuries beyond that. You know, the Spaniards had slaves here in America in the 1500s. 1619 you know, we were colonized by our white oppressors, if you will. But Frederick Douglass spoke to that. A Black abolitionist on July 5th, 1852. And this is from the National Museum of African American History and Culture. He questioned: What to the American Slave is the 4th of July? Can you talk to us about that?
Eddie Glaude
Yeah. I mean, this is the decade of the 1850s, and we have to deal with the fact that the country had just been made a country populated by fugitives and slave catchers because of the violence precipitated with the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. And that decade, of course, is the decade that slavery or the issue of slavery brought the nation to, I guess you would say, Americans to each other’s throats. People had to make choices. Where are you going to identify with the slaveholding regime of the South? Or where are you going to embrace the idea of freedom itself? So the 1850s is the run up to the the first cannon shot in the Civil War, as it were. Douglass is speaking in the midst of that moment because he himself had to become a fugitive. He had to leave the country once the Fugitive Slave Law was passed in 1850. Um, and in this moment, he’s saying, well, what does all this mean to us? You’re talking about you, America, as this shining light of freedom, as this “City on the Hill.” That doesn’t matter, he said to us. It’s a sham, right? And that you have this serpent at the end of that speech coiled up in the bosom of the nation. And let’s be clear to April, July 5th, even though it wasn’t the occasion in 1852, July 5th has always been a significant day in African American history, because July 5th represents the abolition of slavery in the state of New York. We used to celebrate July 5th we celebrate Juneteenth. Like we celebrated August 1st. Like we celebrated January 1st because we had an alternative commemorative calendar to celebrate freedom of a different order. So Douglass was speaking in that tradition in that moment to call attention to the hypocrisy of the nation.
April Ryan
Hypocrisy of the nation. I mean, what was yesterday is still today. I just, you know, I just can’t help but think that and think about the fight for freedom yesterday and the fight to regain freedom, the freedoms that we lost today, and to also have freedoms, some freedoms that we’ve never had. I mean, is there irony there, do you believe?
Eddie Glaude
Yeah. I think, you know, I think so, particularly given what happened in the mid 20th century. Because what’s going on now is, of course, they’re not only re-litigating the Black freedom struggle, the women’s movement, the gay liberation movement of the 1960s and 70s, they’re literally ripping out its infrastructure right in front of us, but because of the divide. You know what I argue in America USA, is that this divided soul, this double consciousness of America that we imagine ourselves as this beacon of freedom and as a white republic, the way in which the country, April, has finessed that is that it believes that freedom is the possession of white folk to give and take away. And so what we have is this cycle of freedom snatching. Right? One minute there’s a kind of sentimentality. “Oh, what can we do for you?” And then the next minute, to believe it or not. “What else do you want?” We go from sentimentality, sentimental wet tears to to white rage. As Carol Anderson, the historian at Emory tells us. And so this cycle of sentimentality and white rage, right, moves us from freedom snatching to freedom seeking. Right? And so we’re in a moment where these folks think they can snatch away something because they think they possess it. And that’s been the history of the country since its founding.
April Ryan
Freedom snatching. I love that. So a portion of the Declaration of Independence for the 13 states, the 13 colonies, if you will, “we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with their by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” That kind of goes back, snatching the freedom to what you said, the consent of the governed. Does that really apply today?
Eddie Glaude
Well, it should, you know, but there’s always been in this in the history of the country. Right. The articulation of that powerful principle, you can imagine. What does it mean to give voice to that principle in a world that is defined by monarchical power, by kings and queens and the like, to say that everyday, ordinary people have the capacity of self-governance, I mean, that’s extraordinary. But at the same time that there are illiberal forces. Remember, the United States was a corporation before it was a country.
April Ryan
Ooh.
Eddie Glaude
We have to understand that. And so there there’s always there. There’s always been either these economic realities that that short-circuit that principle that you just read in the Declaration. And then there are these illiberal beliefs and commitments around race that have qualified who the people are, who those folks who could be, in fact, self-governing. Because we, you know, the power of the country’s idea rests in its faith in the people. The irony or the tragedy is who they take to be “the people.” You see who we take to be “the people?” Um, and it’s it’s we’re in a moment now where there are folks who insist, and we see this with the Supreme Court decision with TPS and the like. They insist that this country must be and must always remain a white republic.
April Ryan
So if what I’m getting from you is correct, the business turned government now looks at in 2026, “we the people,” not necessarily as Haitians or Syrians, but maybe white South Africans who are seeking refuge here, white people here, men, white men, spiritual white men, white evangelical men. Not necessarily women. Is that?
Eddie Glaude
Yeah I remember.
April Ryan
Yeah. Go ahead.
Eddie Glaude
Yeah. Remember, you know, Trump invoked. Well, why can’t we get, uh, migrants, our immigrants from Norway? Uh, and, you know, we see the asylum program. Who’s been benefiting? The majority, 9000 plus South Africans have been. Why? This is an echo of the 1920s. I write in the book. I talk about the 150th anniversary, basically shadowed, overshadowed by the influence of the Klan. So much so, April, that the Klan’s annual convention, they were they were approved to hold their annual convention on the grounds of the Philadelphia Exposition, celebrating the 150th anniversary. They were going to let the flag and burn across at the same time. But this is the period in which the Klan is arguing for Nordic immigration, that they wanted 100% Americanism, as they call it. And so what we’re finding, what we’re hearing in our current moment is an echo, right, of something that was that animated our past in the 1920s. Absolutely.
April Ryan
So those echoes of the past let us know where America is, where you want to make it great again. Is that— we found the marker that Donald Trump talked about in the first term. Now, in the second term, is that what you’re saying?
Eddie Glaude
Exactly. That’s not new. We don’t want to exceptionalize Trump. He’s just an avatar of something that has always been present in the American body politic. Yeah, absolutely.
April Ryan
Mhm. So many have likened this moment to the Lost Cause, which depended on government and civil actors to rewrite the Confederacy and the institution of slavery for people who feel helpless. Is there reason for optimism? In other words, history is instructive about this moment. We could have predicted it. But does history also give us a reason for optimism?
Eddie Glaude
Well, you know, I’m never optimistic. I’ve come from a blues people and the blues aren’t optimistic. They’re hopeful, but they’re not optimistic. I think we history shows us that that no matter what the how the country has tried to imagine itself, we have always spoken back. You know, one of the things I’ve learned from reading and writing about James Baldwin is that, you know, he tells us that human beings are at once monstrous and miracles. So we’re capable of monstrous things, but we’re also capable of miraculous action as well. So my faith resides in ordinary people. In us. And so that’s all we have to do, is refuse this to make a choice. And we can get on that. We can get to the other side of this madness, but there’s no guarantee. What does the blues say, B.B. King? As Cornel West is fond of quoting, “nobody loves me but my mother, and she could be jiving, too.” So you don’t want to be walking around here too optimistic.
April Ryan
So. But if what does the refusal are you talking about? We need to refuse. What does the refusal look like? We know it’s in the courts. We have to refuse in the courts. But en masse, if you’re talking about people, descendants of enslaved Africans in America, which we’ve been talking about and what Frederick Douglass talked about in 1852, what does the refusal look like? Does that lead to a change of the founding documents?
Eddie Glaude
Well, I don’t know. You know, it’s up to us. I’m not quite sure. You know, and I think it’s important for me to admit this. Right, because it’s not clear. You know, usually whenever the fever dream spikes, April, over the course of the history of black folk in this country, our task has been to get our babies to the other side, you know. Now, when I say refusal, I mean, when we hear, and when we witness immigration policies, we have to say no to it. We have to say no to it at the ballot box. We have to say no to it at the in the streets. We have to say no to it, to our representatives and the like. If we see what like we’ve seen the gutting of the Voting Rights Act, the redrawing of districts, we have to say not only no to the policy, but we have to organize, as they’re doing in Mississippi, as they’re doing it in Georgia, as they’re doing in Alabama. We have to organize in order to undermine the the underlying assumptions that inform the way in which they’re drawing the maps. Right? So if we turn out any larger numbers, right, then the very assumptions that they’re using to redraw the maps are, in fact challenged by the very way in which we’re behaving politically. So the refusal is going to take form and shape in a number of different ways at the level of politics and the social level. And I want to say this, it’s our refusal to be silent in the face of those who are capitulating to this. I said right after Trump was elected the second time: if I walk into a room and everybody is comfortable in that room once I come in there, but I must be doing something wrong, because the only thing I can conclude, five years ago we were in a racial reckoning, and now here we are. The only thing I can conclude is that some folk were lying. And so I need to refuse to capitulate to their lying. In fact, shall we say, calling attention to to the country in his current state.
April Ryan
Well, Eddie Glaude, do you have anything else you’d like to offer? As we are in this celebration of 250 years, 1776, the Declaration of Independence.
Eddie Glaude
You know, I say at the end of America, USA, April. And some things are not complicated. We try to make them complicated. All we need to do is to finally make a choice. America has to grow the hell up. We have to make a choice. Either we’re going to be a beacon of freedom, and we can debate what that means. Or are we going to be a white republic? We can’t be both. And this 250th, as Trump and his supporters engaging in a storybook version of the country, I would love for the full diversity of America to show itself to be on full display. We need to show up and show out and give vision and voice to the kind of country we want. So let’s make a choice come July 4th.
April Ryan
Eddie Glaude just said it. America needs to grow the hell up. I’m telling you, I mean some real truth for real time. That’s going through some growing pains. We, the people, who are still forming a more perfect union. Eddie Glaude, the author of America, USA How Race Shadows the Nation’s Anniversaries. How perfect, how perfectly timed for this moment in history. Eddie Glaude, thank you so much for your time and your continued thought to make us really take note of this moment that we’re in and yesterday, and thank you for really putting that point on one of the founding Fathers who people don’t normally look at as a founding father, Frederick Douglass. Thank you so much.
Eddie Glaude
Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you for being the truth teller that you are. I appreciate you.
April Ryan
Thank you, Eddie.
