TWO PHILLY TRUTHS
We should adapt Frederick Douglass’ famous quote to ask: What to the oppressed is the Semiquincentennial?
I’ve been thinking a lot about the speech Frederick Douglass gave on the 76th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Posed as a question, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” the answer written in commentary form hasn’t lost its power or relevance in Philadelphia in 2026: “What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.”
This summer will place Philadelphia in the spotlight not only with the celebration of America’s Semiquincentennial, but also as a host city for the FIFA World Cup, the PGA Championship, and the MLB All-Star Game.
Just as Douglass decried our delusions of progress and challenged why victims of a broken system would celebrate their own oppression, we see that patterns repeat.
Philadelphia will be center stage, celebrated as having birthed the nation, while the federal government wages war on its own cities, defunds basic services for its people, whitewashes and rewrites history in spaces such as the President’s House at Independence National Historical Park, and, despite describing itself as an avatar of freedom, bombs sovereign nations.
As we invite the world to celebrate the World Cup with us, we have banned residents of some of the participating countries and unleashed a year of domestic terrorism by agents of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which will make it unsafe for people of color from throughout the world to attend.
The events themselves will serve as an excuse for an influx of federal security agents — and there is nothing that makes me feel safe about them coming to Philadelphia this summer to keep us “safe.”
In Philadelphia, while we want to accentuate the positive and celebrate our standing as a great city, we continue to see an increase in the unhoused population, a lack of affordable housing, underfunded and ineffective education and transportation, and a lack of economic opportunity for our residents.
And we continue to ignore our broken carceral system, which hungrily awaits the failures of everything listed above.
As Douglass wrote in his famous speech: “I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common.”
We hold these truths …
This summer is not just about the nation, but about Philadelphia trying to put its best foot forward to show the few gleaming spots in our house, while keeping visitors from seeing the dirt inside the closet or under the couch.
As Douglass likely experienced in 1852, I can already see the faces of some reading this and thinking, This is not the time for all your talk. We cannot allow Philadelphia to be disparaged.
I am not disparaging Philadelphia — I am holding onto the city’s multiple truths.
Our city cannot stand on both sides of history.
This is a great city and is the birthplace of independence for some — but instead of serving as the cheerleaders for despots and a city that submits to our nation’s current “king,” we should be the city that serves as the vanguard of resistance. Our city cannot stand on both sides of history and hold hands with our oppressors simply because we are desperate to be noticed.
As it was with Douglass 175 years ago, where we stand today will be remembered tomorrow.
The need for plain speaking
Forty years after Douglass shared his words about the Fourth of July, America had once again chosen to celebrate its history and place in the world — this time through the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, which marked the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ landing in the Americas.
Just four years earlier, the event had been held in Paris, and marvels such as the Eiffel Tower were shared with the world, showing the importance and ingenuity of the host nation.
This era is often referred to as the “Gilded Age,” a time our current president fondly looks back on and wishes we would return to. “We were at our richest from 1870 to 1913. That’s when we were a tariff country,” President Donald Trump said in March. But it was also a time defined by government corruption, inequality, and exploitation, and it took place only 28 years after the end of slavery in America.
While Paris gave the world the Eiffel Tower, the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago introduced the world to Cracker Jack, the first dishwasher, and the first Ferris wheel — which stood 264 feet tall and carried 2,000 passengers — a monument to America’s greatness!
African American luminaries such as Douglass and Ida B. Wells were denied any formal space or role.
While the fair was about all of America, the only space for Indigenous peoples was in the exotic exhibits of peoples from around the world. While the fair was about all of America, white women asked for their place within the fair and, after initially being denied a role, were eventually granted one through the creation of the World’s Congress of Representative Women.
While the fair was about all of America, African American luminaries such as Douglass and Ida B. Wells were denied any formal space or role. Instead, it was determined by organizers that participation of African Americans would be marked by introduction to the character Aunt Jemima — a fictional depiction playing to all fantasies of the happy slave and the way of life lost after emancipation — and through Negro Day, during which the organizers of the fair gave away 2,000 free watermelons to visitors.
After being denied any real role within the fair, African American leaders appealed for sponsorship to the newly recognized World’s Congress of Representative Women, and that group said no — foreshadowing the next 150 years of American politics. With that denial, African American leadership turned to the Haitian delegation and received support from the only country that successfully established a new government from a slave revolt.
It was from the Haitian exhibition space that an alternative conversation took place, one that started with “The Reason Why: The Colored American is not in the World’s Columbia Exhibition,” a pamphlet which explained the current condition of the American Negro, but also spoke to the history, the successes, and a vision for the future.
In it, Douglass wrote that “it involves the necessity of plain speaking of wrongs and outrages endured, and of rights withheld, and withheld in flagrant contradiction to boasted American Republican liberty and civilization. It is always more agreeable to speak well of one’s country and its institutions than to speak otherwise; to tell of their good qualities rather than of their evil ones.”
I live and work in Kensington, an area of Philadelphia built during the Gilded Age to create wealth for a few. Our community is literally still trying to recover from that era; we have no interest in bringing it back or celebrating the destruction it caused.
Just as during the Gilded Age — when a false history was celebrated in order to justify and whitewash the failures of America — we are walking into the trap of reproducing our mistakes without recognizing the current conditions, or centering the voices of those most affected by them.
Welcome to ‘A People’s Exposition’
In the spirit of Douglass and Wells, and the ways they challenged “the celebration of oppression,” New Kensington Community Development Corp., along with partners throughout the city, invite you to participate in “A People’s Exposition” at the Kensington Engagement Center — to take a critical and honest look at our city’s challenges, to envision a just and equitable future, and to act on cocreated solutions.
We invite you into a space of the curious and the committed.
Opening on May 20 and running through October, partners from across the city will collectively create a welcoming space where we can learn about the status of Philadelphia’s most pressing issues, including the housing crisis, poverty and workforce development, the criminal justice system, youth and education, and community food systems and transportation.
We invite you into a space of the curious and the committed, to learn and connect to current efforts and campaigns that are working toward addressing our city’s greatest needs.
Leaving off with hope
We all need and deserve celebration and joy. Philly has many things to be proud of — be it housing wins, Chinatown wins, or the daily wins of just making it another day on the right side of the grass — but we can and should hold two truths at once.
While many in our city will only want to take part in performative displays of national and civic pride without facing the true underbelly of our nation and city, I encourage us all to resist whitewashing and to support participatory processes to fight the oppressive and exploitative machine that continues to be built and executed 250 years after independence. As a true patriot would.
And as Frederick Douglass did on the Fourth of July.
He challenged us to remember that for many, there is very little, if anything, to celebrate, and we should instead be engaged in reflection and organizing to put into action what is necessary to create a just society for all.
“I do not despair of this country,” he wrote. “There are forces in operation, which must inevitably, work the downfall of slavery … I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope.”
Bill McKinney is a Kensington resident and the executive director of the New Kensington Community Development Corp.
All images courtesy of the New Kensington Community Development Corp., except where noted.