As the United States marks 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the anniversary is unfolding amid deep political division and renewed debate over citizenship, immigration and federal power.
The weeks between Juneteenth and July 4 have long drawn attention to the distance between the country’s founding ideals and the experiences of Black Americans. This year, those questions have become even more urgent. The Trump administration has recast the federal America250 celebration as “Freedom 250,” while the Supreme Court’s birthright citizenship ruling in Trump v. Barbara has raised new concerns about the future of the 14th Amendment.
Those developments, along with efforts to tighten immigration restrictions, reduce the role of federal agencies and restrain the definition of citizenship, have placed the question of belonging at the center of the nation’s semiquincentennial.
Using an Africana Studies lens, today’s session shifts the focus away from 1776 as a simple moment of celebration. Instead, it examines 250 years of African and African American political thought, institution-building and self-determination.
The discussion draws on the differing constitutional views of Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Clarence Thomas and looks at citizenship as both a legal protection and an ongoing struggle, as it traces that struggle from the Negro Convention Movement and Reconstruction to current debates over birthright citizenship, the SAVE Act, immigration policy and the policing of bodies and borders.
