Happy 4th of July from St. Helena Island, SC

4th of July Celebration at Texaco Station on St. Helena Island, SC in 1939

photographer Wolcott – Library of Congress

Their ancestors from places now known as Spain, France, England, Central and West Africa among others were enslaved laborers on St. Helena Island, South Carolina alongside Indigenous Americans from the early sixteenth century through the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776 through a Civil War begun in cannon fire on Fort Sumter, South Carolina a hundred nautical miles north of their island in 1861 when Union forces set up occupation on St. Helena and freed all slaves working on plantations.

The Declaration of Independence celebrated that 4th. of July at the Texaco filling station on St. Helena in 1939 is the same one we celebrate in 2023 for the hope, the promises that begin with the words “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.”

The poet Maya Angelou said when she gets up every morning, she doesn’t think those people in the past are gone and forgotten, but when she gets up, she says everybody come with me.

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Happy 4th. of July! Everybody come with us.