LDF Issues Statement on 250th Anniversary of the Founding of the United States of America

Read a PDF of our statement here.

This Fourth of July will mark commemorations and celebrations across the country in honor of the United States' 250th anniversary. Ahead of the anniversary, Janai Nelson, President and Director-Counsel of the Legal Defense Fund, issued the following statement:

"As we commemorate 250 years of the founding of the United States, we must remember that this land belonged to Indigenous populations before any other people could lay claim to it - and that freedom was not extended to all Americans at our country's initial founding. In the context of that history, no commemoration of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, which established the United States as an independent nation, can ignore the reset that the Reconstruction Amendments heralded for our country, and their promise of an inclusive multi-racial democracy that ensures freedom and equality for all.

"Unfortunately, on this milestone anniversary, our country sits at a perilous crossroads. Well-established civil and human rights are under assault, the democratic process and the rule of law are being undermined, and critical progress toward achieving our constitutional ideals is being undone. Whether it's discriminatory policing that incarcerates Black youth at disproportionately high rates, segregation that continues to fester and sprout like an insidious weed in our school systems, modern-day Jim Crow tactics like redlining that siphon wealth from Black families, or the decades-long project to erode and eliminate the protections of the Voting Rights Act, we are at an inflection point in the narrative of our nation.

"That is why, this Fourth of July, instead of merely commemorating our nation's founding, we must embrace a refounding - a declaration of our enduring commitment to achieving a multiracial democracy by, of, and for all the people that call this country home - not just the people in the halls of power.

"This starts with promoting laws that protect and that liberate. It requires a remodeling of our election system and establishing an affirmative right to vote. It means reforms for the highest court in the land. We also need a Congress that will do its job, as a co-equal branch of government, to place checks on an overreaching executive and remain accountable to the people it was created to serve.

"For the next 250 years, we must continue to safeguard the democracy that so many have died to defend. We must take up the mantle left to us by the founders of our multiracial democracy - the fathers and mothers of the civil rights movement - and refuse to let this country turn its back on its history and its future promise."

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Founded in 1940, the Legal Defense Fund (LDF)is the nation's first civil rights legal organization. LDF has been completely separate from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) since 1957, though it was founded under the leadership of Thurgood Marshall while he was at the NAACP. LDF's Thurgood Marshall Institute (TMI) is a division of LDF that undertakes innovative research and houses LDF's archive. In all media attributions, please refer to us as the Legal Defense Fund or LDF (do not include NAACP) and refer to the Institute as LDF's Thurgood Marshall Institute or TMI.