Greetings and happy first full week of July!
Over the weekend the United States celebrated the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, granting its sovereignty as a nation. At the time of the signing of the Declaration, 500,000 Africans were enslaved by colonizers who did not find the irony of owning humans as property while they themselves were seeking freedom from being politically tied to Great Britain. Nor did they have the foresight to unshackle a culture until nearly a century after the signing of the Declaration at the behest of a bloody, divisive war, presided over by an American president who could take or leave the enslaved Africans that occupied U.S. soil.
Ahead of this American milestone, I asked a handful of Black folks to send unprompted birthday voice notes to America. Click the video above to hear those shout outs
