A Service to Remember the Visions of Freedom
Sunday, July 3, 2016
The Constitution of the Iroquois Nations:
The Great Binding Law, Gayanashagowa
This version was prepared by Arthur C. Parker, Archeologist of the State Museum
in New York in 1915, and published by the University of the State of New York as
Bulletin 184 on April 1, 1916. Some sources place the origin of the Five Nation
Confederacy as early as 1390 AD, but others insist it was prepared about 14501500 AD; in any case, it was well before any interaction with European colonists.
Early explorers and colonists found the Iroquois well established, as they had been
for many generations: with a democratic government; with a form of religion that
acknowledged a Creator in heaven; with a strong sense of family which was based
on, and controlled by, their women; and many other surprises you will soon
discover.
It must also be pointed out that this document refers to the "Five" Nations, while
other references to the Confederacy speak of the "Six" nations. From the inception,
there were the Five Nations discussed in this Constitution. In about 1715, the
Tuscarora Nation, once part of the Iroquois peoples in a much earlier period of
their history, moved up from North Carolina to avoid warfare with the invading
white settlers, and were adopted into the Confederacy. At this point in time, the
Iroquois controlled many parts of our now eastern states from their homelands in
what is now New York State. The original Five Nations were:
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Mohawk: People Possessors of the Flint
Onondaga: People on the Hills
Seneca: Great Hill People
Oneida: Granite People
Cayuga: People at the Mucky Land
“Rights of the People of the Five Nations”
Whenever a specially important matter or a great emergency is presented before
the Confederate Council and the nature of the matter affects the entire body of the
Five Nations, threatening their utter ruin, then the Lords of the Confederacy must
submit the matter to the decision of their people and the decision of the people
shall affect the decision of the Confederate Council. This decision shall be a
confirmation of the voice of the people.
The men of every clan of the Five Nations shall have a Council Fire ever burning
in readiness for a council of the clan. When it seems necessary for a council to be
held to discuss the welfare of the clans, then the men may gather about the fire.
This council shall have the same rights as the council of the women.
The women of every clan of the Five Nations shall have a Council Fire ever
burning in readiness for a council of the clan. When in their opinion it seems
necessary for the interest of the people they shall hold a council and their decisions
and recommendations shall be introduced before the Council of the Lords by the
War Chief for its consideration.
All the Clan council fires of a nation or of the Five Nations may unite into one
general council fire, or delegates from all the council fires may be appointed to
unite in a general council for discussing the interests of the people. The people
shall have the right to make appointments and to delegate their power to others of
their number. When their council shall have come to a conclusion on any matter,
their decision shall be reported to the Council of the Nation or to the Confederate
Council (as the case may require) by the War Chief or the War Chiefs.
Before the real people united their nations, each nation had its council fires. Before
the Great Peace their councils were held. The five Council Fires shall continue to
burn as before and they are not quenched. The Lords of each nation in future shall
settle their nation's affairs at this council fire governed always by the laws and
rules of the council of the Confederacy and by the Great Peace.”
"Modern History Sourcebook: The Constitution of the Iroquois Confederacy." Fordham University.
Trans. Gerald Murphy. Fordham University, Aug. 1997. Web. 27 June 2016.
The Declaration of Independence (1776)
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) wrote the first draft of the Declaration of
Independence as a member of a committee that included John Adams and
Benjamin Franklin. The Continental Congress made significant changes in
Jefferson’s draft, in particular, removing – at the insistence of delegates from
Georgia and South Carolina – his vigorous condemnation of King George III for
permitting slavery and the slave trade in the colonies. On July 4, 1776, the
declaration was approved by Congress.
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. That to secure these rights,
Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the
consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes
destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to
institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing
its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and
Happiness.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General
Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the
rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People
of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are,
and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States.. And for the support of this
Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we
mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
Abigail Adams’ letter to John Adams (March 31, 1776)
Abigail Adams (1744-1818) was born Massachusetts; largely self-educated, she
read widely in history. In 1764 she married John Adams, then a young Boston
lawyer. During the long years that he was away from home attending to public
affairs, the pair maintained a steady correspondence. Over the years – as John
Adams attended the Continental Congress, or served abroad in diplomatic
assignments or as vice-president and president – Abigail Adams wrote letters to
family and friends, describing the life about her. Not only did she defend women’s
rights, but she opposed slavery. On March 31, 1776, Abigail Adams wrote to her
husband while the Continental Congress was deliberating independence.
The future First Lady wrote in part, “I long to hear that you have declared an
independency. And, by the way, in the new code of laws which I suppose it will be
necessary for you to make, I desire you would remember the ladies and be more
generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited
power into the hands of the husbands. Remember, all men would be tyrants if they
could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to
foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we
have no voice or representation.”
History.com Staff. "March 31, 1776: Abigail Adams Urges Husband to “remember the Ladies”."
History.com. A&E Television Networks, 2009. Web. 27 June 2016.
Fredrick Douglas: Fourth of July Address – The Meaning of July Fourth for
the Negro (July 5, 1852)
Fellow Citizens, I am not wanting in respect for the fathers of this republic. The
signers of the Declaration of Independence were brave men. They were great men,
too-great enough to give frame to a great age. It does not often happen to a nation
to raise, at one time, such a number of truly great men. The point from which I am
compelled to view them is not, certainly, the most favorable; and yet I cannot
contemplate their great deeds with less than admiration. They were statesmen,
patriots and heroes, and for the good they did, and the principles they contended
for, I will unite with you to honor their memory....
...Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here
to-day? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence?
Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in
that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? And am I, therefore, called upon
to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits and
express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?
Would to God, both for your sakes and ours that an affirmative answer could be
truthfully returned to these questions! Then would my task be light, and my burden
easy and delightful… But such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense
of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of 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. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence,
bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought
light and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth July is
yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the
grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous
anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony… [But] allow me to say,
in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented, of the
state of the nation, I do not despair of this country. There are forces in operation
which must inevitably work the downfall of slavery. "The arm of the Lord is not
shortened," and the doom of slavery is certain. I, therefore, leave off where I
began, with hope. While drawing encouragement from "the Declaration of
Independence," the great principles it contains, and the genius of American
Institutions, my spirit is also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age.
Douglass, Frederick, and Philip Sheldon Foner. “The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass”. Vol. II.
New York: International, 1950. Print. Pre-Civil War Decade 1850-1860.
Abraham Lincoln: Gettysburg Address (November 19, 1863)
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a
new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are
created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation
so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met here on a great
battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it as a final resting
place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether
fitting and proper that we should do this.
But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate - we cannot consecrate - we cannot hallow
this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled, here, have
consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little
note, nor long remember, what we say here, but can never forget what they did
here.
It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which
they have, thus far, so nobly carried on. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to
the great task remaining before us - that from these honored dead we take
increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of
devotion - that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain;
that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom; and that this government of the
people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Sojourner Truth: I am Pleading for My People (1878)
I am pleading for my people, a poor downtrodden race
Who dwell in freedom’s boasted land with no abiding place
I am pleading that my people may have their rights restored,
For they have long been toiling, and yet had no reward
They are forced the crops to culture, but not for them they yield,
Although both late and early, they labor in the field.
While I bear upon my body, the scores of many a gash,
I’m pleading for my people who groan beneath the lash.
I’m pleading for the mothers who gaze in wild despair
Upon the hated auction block, and see their children there.
I feel for those in bondage—well may I feel for them.
I know how fiendish hearts can be that sell their fellow men.
Yet those oppressors steeped in guilt—I still would have them live;
For I have learned of Jesus, to suffer and forgive!
I want no carnal weapons, no machinery of death.
For I love to not hear the sound of war’s tempestuous breath.
I do not ask you to engage in death and bloody strife.
I do not dare insult my God by asking for their life.
But while your kindest sympathies to foreign lands do roam,
I ask you to remember your own oppressed at home.
I plead with you to sympathize with signs and groans and scars,
And note how base the tyranny beneath the stripes and stars.
Sojourner Truth. “Narrative of Sojourner Truth: A Bondswoman of Olden Time”. New York, NY:
Penguin, 1998. Print.
Franklin D. Roosevelt's Third Inaugural Address (1941)
On each national day of Inauguration since 1789, the people have renewed their
sense of dedication to the United States. In Washington's day the task of the people
was to create and weld together a Nation. In Lincoln's day the task of the people
was to preserve that Nation from disruption from within. In this day the task of the
people is to save that Nation and its institutions from disruption from without. To
us there has come a time, in the midst of swift happenings, to pause for a moment
and take stock- to recall what our place in history has been, and to rediscover what
we are and what we may be.
The destiny of America was proclaimed in words of prophecy spoken by our first
President in his first Inaugural in 1789-words almost directed, it would seem, to
this year of 1941:
“The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican
model of government are justly considered deeply; finally, staked on the
experiment intrusted to the hands of the American people.”
If we lose that sacred fire, if we let it be smothered with doubt and fear, then we
shall reject the destiny which Washington strove so valiantly and so triumphantly
to establish. The preservation of the spirit and faith of the Nation does, and will,
furnish the highest justification for every sacrifice that we may make in the cause
of national defense.
In the face of great perils never before encountered, our strong purpose is to protect
and to perpetuate the integrity of democracy. For this we muster the spirit of
America, and the faith of America. We do not retreat. We are not content to stand
still. As Americans, we go forward, in the service of our country, by the will of
God.
Mary Tsukamoto: Japanese American in an Internment Camp
We saw all these people behind the fence, looking out, hanging onto the wire, and
looking out because they were anxious to know who was coming in. But I will
never forget the shocking feeling that human beings were behind this fence like
animals [crying]. And we were going to also lose our freedom and walk inside of
that gate and find ourselves…cooped up there…when the gates were shut, we
knew that we had lost something that was very precious; that we were no longer
free.
"Our Story: American History Stories and Activities You Can Do Together." OurStory : Activities : Life in
a WWII Japanese-American Internment Camp : Web. 27 June 2016.
Dr. Roscoe Brown: Tuskegee Airman (Former commander of the 100th
Fighter Squadron, 332nd Fighter Group)
We were flying in the skies over Europe defending our country, and at the same
time fighting the battle against racial segregation. Because of our great record and
our persistence, we inspired revolutionary reform which led to integration in the
armed forces in 1948. As the president said, (this) provided a symbol for America
that all people can contribute to this country and be treated fairly.
John J Kruzel. "United States Department of Defense." Defense.gov News Article: Congress Honors
Tuskegee Airmen with Its Most Distinguished Civilian Award. 29 Mar. 2007. Web. 27 June 2016.
Report to the American People on Civil Rights
President John F. Kennedy (June 11, 1963)
Today we are committed to a worldwide struggle to promote and protect the rights
of all who wish to be free… It ought to be possible, in short, for every American to
enjoy the privileges of being American without regard to his race or his color. In
short, every American ought to have the right to be treated as he would wish to be
treated, as one would wish his children to be treated. But this is not the case…. We
are confronted primarily with a moral issue. It is as old as the scriptures and is as
clear as the American Constitution. The heart of the question is whether all
Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities, whether we are
going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be treated. If an American,
because his skin is dark, cannot eat lunch in a restaurant open to the public, if he
cannot send his children to the best public school available, if he cannot vote for
the public officials who will represent him, if, in short, he cannot enjoy the full and
free life which all of us want, then who among us would be content to have the
color of his skin changed and stand in his place? Who among us would then be
content with the counsels of patience and delay?
One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves,
yet their heirs, their grandsons, are not fully free. They are not yet freed from the
bonds of injustice. They are not yet freed from social and economic oppression.
And this Nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its
citizens are free.
We preach freedom around the world, and we mean it, and we cherish our freedom
here at home, but are we to say to the world, and much more importantly, to each
other that this is the land of the free except for the Negroes; that we have no
second-class citizens except Negroes; that we have no class or caste system, no
ghettoes, no master race except with respect to Negroes?
Now the time has come for this Nation to fulfill its promise.
Justice Anthony Kennedy: Marriage Equality (June 26, 2015)
The Constitution promises liberty to all within its reach, a liberty that includes
certain specific rights that allow persons, within a lawful realm, to define and
express their identity. The petitioners in these cases seek to find that liberty by
marrying someone of the same sex and having their marriages deemed lawful on
the same terms and conditions as marriages between persons of the opposite sex.
No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of
love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two
people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners
in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past
death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the
idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they
seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to
live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask
for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.
Jonathan Adler. "SCOTUS Finds Constitutional Right to Same-sex Marriage." Washington Post. The
Washington Post, 26 June 2015. Web. 27 June 2016.
Cesar Chavez: Address to the Commonwealth Club of California (November
9, 1984)
All my life, I have been driven by one dream, one goal, one vision: To overthrow a
farm labor system in this nation which treats farm workers as if they were not
important human beings… That dream, that vision, grew from my own experience
with racism, with hope, with the desire to be treated fairly and to see my people
treated as human beings and not as chattel. It grew from anger and rage--emotions
I felt 40 years ago when people of my color were denied the right to see a movie or
eat at a restaurant in many parts of California.
Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot uneducate the person
who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You
cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore… Like the other immigrant
groups, the day will come when we win the economic and political rewards which
are in keeping with our numbers in society. The day will come when the politicians
do the right thing by our people out of political necessity and not out of charity or
idealism.
That day may not come this year. That day may not come during this decade. But it
will come, someday! And when that day comes, we shall see the fulfillment of that
passage from the Book of Matthew in the New Testament, ‘That the last shall be
first and the first shall be last.’
And on that day, our nation shall fulfill its creed--and that fulfillment shall enrich
us all.
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Recording from the sermon, “Remaining Awake Through a Great
Revolution”, delivered at the Washington National Cathedral on March 31,
1968
Through our scientific and technological genius, we have made of this world a
neighborhood and yet we have not had the ethical commitment to make of it a
brotherhood. But somehow, and in some way, we have got to do this. We must all
learn to live together as brothers or we will all perish together as fools. We are tied
together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of
mutuality. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some
strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be.
And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is
the way God’s universe is made; this is the way it is structured.
John Donne caught it years ago and placed it in graphic terms: "No man is an
island entire of itself. Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main."
And he goes on toward the end to say, "Any man’s death diminishes me because I
am involved in mankind; therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it
tolls for thee." We must see this, believe this, and live by it if we are to remain
awake through a great revolution.
Secondly, we are challenged to eradicate the last vestiges of racial injustice from
our nation. I must say this morning that racial injustice is still the black man’s
burden and the white man’s shame.
It is an unhappy truth that racism is a way of life for the vast majority of white
Americans, spoken and unspoken, acknowledged and denied, subtle and
sometimes not so subtle—the disease of racism permeates and poisons a whole
body politic. And I can see nothing more urgent than for America to work
passionately and unrelentingly—to get rid of the disease of racism.
Something positive must be done. Everyone must share in the guilt as individuals
and as institutions. The government must certainly share the guilt; individuals must
share the guilt; even the church must share the guilt.
We must face the sad fact that at eleven o’clock on Sunday morning when we
stand to sing "In Christ there is no East or West," we stand in the most segregated
hour of America.
The hour has come for everybody, for all institutions of the public sector and the
private sector to work to get rid of racism. And now if we are to do it we must
honestly admit certain things and get rid of certain myths that have constantly been
disseminated all over our nation.
One is the myth of time. It is the notion that only time can solve the problem of
racial injustice. And there are those who often sincerely say to the Negro and his
allies in the white community, "Why don’t you slow up? Stop pushing things so
fast. Only time can solve the problem. And if you will just be nice and patient and
continue to pray, in a hundred or two hundred years the problem will work itself
out."
There is an answer to that myth. It is that time is neutral. It can be used either
constructively or destructively. And I am sorry to say this morning that I am
absolutely convinced that the forces of ill will in our nation, the extreme rightists
of our nation—the people on the wrong side—have used time much more
effectively than the forces of goodwill. And it may well be that we will have to
repent in this generation. Not merely for the vitriolic words and the violent actions
of the bad people, but for the appalling silence and indifference of the good people
who sit around and say, "Wait on time."
Somewhere we must come to see that human progress never rolls in on the wheels
of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and the persistent work of
dedicated individuals who are willing to be co-workers with God. And without this
hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the primitive forces of social stagnation.
So we must help time and realize that the time is always ripe to do right.
(Michelle Alexander) - The New Jim Crow
Seeing race is not the problem. Refusing to care for the people we see is the
problem. The fact that the meaning of race may evolve over time or lose much of
its significance is hardly a reason to be struck blind. We should hope not for a
colorblind society but instead for a world in which we can see each other fully,
learn from each other, and do what we can to respond to each other with love. That
was King’s dream—a society that is capable of seeing each of us, as we are, with
love. That is a goal worth fighting for.
Michelle Alexander, and Cornel West. “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness”. New York: New, 2012. Print.
Bryan Stevenson: Wesleyan University’s 184th Commencement Address (May
22, 2016)
I think we have to change the narrative about race in this country. As wonderful as
things are today, it pains me to have to acknowledge that we are still not free in
this country. We are burdened with our history of racial inequality. It hangs over us
like a kind of smog, and this pollution created by this history of racial inequality.
We haven’t dealt with it. We’ve got to change this narrative of racial difference
that we have created in America.
We live in a post-genocidal society. We’re living on land where there was a
genocide. Before white settlers came, there were indigenous people on this
continent and we slaughtered them by the millions through famine and disease and
war. And we haven’t done the things you’re supposed to do to recover as a postgenocidal society. That history of genocide made us tolerant of slavery. And the
great evil of American slavery for me was not involuntary servitude, it was
not forced labor. The great evil of American slavery was the narrative of racial
difference that we crafted. … And we didn’t end it in the middle of the 19th
century.
If you read the 13th Amendment, it talks about involuntary servitude, it talks about
forced labor, but it doesn’t talk about this narrative of racial difference, and
because of that, I don’t think slavery ended in 1865; I think it just evolved….and
we can’t move on until we change this narrative…. Even when we talk about civil
rights, I worry that we’re too celebratory. I hear people talking about the Civil
Rights Movement sometimes, and it sounds like a three-day carnival. On day one,
Rosa Parks didn’t give up her seat on the bus. On day two, Dr. King led a march on
Washington. And on day three, we just changed all the laws and racism was over.
And it would be great if that was our history. But that’s not our history.... I want to
urge you to find ways to stay hopeful. If your activism is not rooted in a hope of
something, if your work is not rooted in a hope of something, then you’ve got to
reorient. Hope is essential. Hope is what gets you to stand up when other people
say sit down. Hope is what gets you to speak when other people want you to be
quiet. Your hope is vital.
Wesleyan.edu