Declaration of Independence Archives

As the United States commemorates 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the nation is looking back. There are ceremonies, speeches, museum exhibits, fireworks, documentaries, and carefully curated retellings of how America came to be. Anniversaries invite reflection. They ask us to remember where we have been, what we have survived, what we have built, and what we still have not fully become. But for African Americans, Native peoples, and other communities whose histories have often been pushed to the margins, remembering is never simple. Every national celebration carries more than one story. There is the story written in official documents, and then there is the story carried in bloodlines, burial grounds, songs, scars, prayers, kitchens, porches, sanctuaries, and the quiet testimonies of those who survived what the nation has often preferred to forget. In this season of national remembrance, another question rises with urgency: What do we read when the books are missing? What do we read when the stories that tell the truth about African Americans, Native peoples, and other marginalized communities are challenged, banned, softened, removed, or made unavailable? What do we read when the shelves no longer hold the fullness of our journey? What do we read when the pages we need have been taken out of reach? The answer came to me in a deeply personal way: Read your own book. I did not hear those words first as a cultural statement. I heard them as a word to my own soul. There was a season when I was navigating mental health challenges, healing, identity, and the painful work of trying to put the pieces of myself back together. I was making decisions that did not feel like me. I was being misunderstood in ways that made me question myself. I was trying to find my footing again after feeling scattered, stretched, spiritually weary, and emotionally displaced. At first, I wanted my circumstances to change. I wanted the confusion to lift. I wanted the misunderstanding to be corrected. I wanted the situation around me to become easier so the situation within me could settle. But I began to realize that the first place God wanted to meet me was not around me. It was within me. It was not that my situation did not matter. It did. But my mindset mattered too. The way I was seeing myself, my story, my value, my pain, and my future needed to be regrounded. I needed to remember who I was before pressure tried to rename me. I needed to return to truth before the noise became my narrator. Still, I felt lost. I felt as though something had been misplaced in the breakdown. There were pieces of me I could not find. Then one day, I picked up one of my own books, 180 Degrees: Release the Negative Self-Talk for the Mindset Change. As I looked at words I had written, one line spoke back to me: “Life lessons and principles to help change our mindset by way of our value in God.” Suddenly, something in me stirred. My inner voice, what I believe was the Holy Spirit, said, “Read your own book.” It was not a call to arrogance, pride, or self-worship. It was a call to remembrance. ● Read what God already brought you through. Read the lessons you already learned. Read the prayers you already prayed. Read the scars that already became wisdom. Read the pages where you already testified that God had kept you. Read your own evidence. It was as if God was saying, “I have already given you tools. I have already allowed you to write from places of survival, healing, and transformation. Before you believe you are empty, go back and read what grace has already written through you.” That moment became more than personal. It became communal. Because our people know what it means to have pages removed. We know what it means to have history interrupted. We know what it means for others to tell our story without our tears, without our context, without our names, without our God. We know what it means for the official record to say one thing while the body remembers another. America may celebrate 250 years of independence, but our people also remember the long gap between the promise of freedom and the experience of freedom. Juneteenth reminds us that news of emancipation reached enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865, more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation. In 2026, we are also remembering 161 years since that announcement of freedom reached those still held in bondage. That history matters because freedom announced is not always freedom experienced. Freedom written is not always freedom lived. Freedom declared is not always freedom delivered. That is why we must keep reading, not only the books on shelves, but the books written in our own lives. When the pages of African American history are challenged, read the grandmother who prayed you through. Read the grandfather who worked with dignity in a world that denied him honor. Read the mother who stretched groceries and grace. Read the father who carried burdens in silence. Read the ancestors who learned to worship under watchful eyes. Read the songs that taught theology before seminaries ever opened their doors to us. Read the family Bible. Read the recipes. Read the quilts. Read the spirituals. Read the names in the cemetery. Read the testimony service. Read the scars that became sermons. For Native communities, read the land. Read the rivers. Read the languages that were not supposed to survive. Read the ceremonies, the elders, the memory of place, and the sacred refusal to disappear. Read the wisdom carried by communities that endured removal, erasure, boarding schools, broken treaties, and still kept breathing. Read your own book! This does not mean we stop fighting for literal books. We must protect access to truthful history. We must support libraries, teachers, writers, historians, parents, and students who understand that a nation cannot heal from what it refuses to tell. A people cannot be whole when their story is treated as dangerous. But when the shelves are threatened, we must also remember that our story has never depended on shelves alone. Before many of our ancestors were allowed to read, they remembered. Before they had access to publishing houses, they preached, sang, testified, whispered, warned, taught, and passed wisdom from one generation to another. They became living libraries. This is not only a cultural issue. It is a spiritual one. The people of God have always been commanded to remember. Scripture does not treat memory as optional. Memory is a discipline. Memory is worship. Memory is resistance. Memory is how a people keep their identity when systems try to rename them. The psalmist declares, “I will remember the deeds of the Lord; yes, I will remember your wonders of old. I will ponder all your work, and meditate on your mighty deeds” (Psalm 77:11-12). That is not passive remembering. That is intentional remembering. It is the kind of remembering that sits down with the evidence of God’s faithfulness and refuses to let present pain erase past deliverance. Psalm 103:2 says, “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits.” In other words, do not let your soul develop spiritual amnesia. Do not forget the God who carried you, healed you, forgave you, restored you, sustained you, and kept you when you did not know how you were going to make it. First Chronicles 16:12 says, “Remember the wondrous works that he has done, his miracles and the judgments he uttered.” Deuteronomy 8:2 says, “And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you.” Not just the easy way. Not just the celebratory way. Not just the polished way. Remember the whole way, the wilderness, the hunger, the manna, the thirst, the rock, the discipline, the mercy, the miracles, and the God who never abandoned you in any of it. Even Jesus, on the night before His suffering, took bread, gave thanks, broke it, and said, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19). At the table, Jesus gave His disciples a memory practice. He knew they would face confusion, grief, persecution, fear, and disorientation. So He gave them something to hold, something to taste, something to repeat, and something to remember. Remembrance can keep you when reality tries to break you. This is why erased history is so dangerous. To take away a people’s books is not simply to remove information. It is to interrupt memory. It is to separate children from the truth of who they are, who their ancestors were, what they survived, what they built, and how God kept them. Frederick Douglass understood this. In his famous address, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?,” Douglass forced the nation to wrestle with the contradiction of celebrating liberty while millions remained enslaved. He did not allow America to enjoy celebration without confrontation. He used memory as a mirror. David Walker understood this too. In his Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World, he reminded Black people that they were not strangers in this land. Their labor, suffering, tears, and blood had helped build the nation that denied them dignity. His words were more than protest; they were a call to remember identity, courage, and worth. Ellen White echoed this sacred necessity of remembrance when she wrote, “We have nothing to fear for the future, except as we shall forget the way the Lord has led us, and His teaching in our past history.” That is the work before us now. As the nation celebrates 250 years, we must ask deeper questions. Whose story is being centered? Whose pain is being softened? Whose labor is being overlooked? Whose land is being forgotten? Whose freedom was delayed? Whose books are being removed? Whose testimony still needs to be heard? And then we must answer with holy courage. Read the books they try to ban. Read the histories they try to bury. Read the Scriptures that command us not to forget. Read the elders who carry wisdom in their bones. Read the songs that got us through. Read the prayers that kept families alive. Read the recipes, quilts, sermons, spirituals, journals, photographs, names, and gravestones. Read the land. Read the tears. Read the laughter. Read the survival. And when you cannot find the page, become the page. Tell the truth until our children know where they come from. Testify until memory becomes resistance. Teach until erasure loses its power. Heal until the broken pieces become witness. We are not pageless people. ● We are living epistles. ● We are evidence. ● We are testimony. ● We are the books God is still writing. So read your own book. African American Man Pointing to the Bible, the Word of God

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