Episode 192, The American Ideals Are Worth Embracing
In this episode, I reflect on the ideals expressed at the founding of the United States and the long struggle to make those ideals real. The Declaration of Independence proclaimed that all people are created equal, yet the nation began with deep contradictions, including slavery and laws that denied freedom to many.
One way to see this tension clearly is through the experience of Black Americans. From the Constitution’s fugitive slave clause and the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 to the Supreme Court’s decision in Dred Scott, the law often failed to protect the equality the nation proclaimed.
Yet many Americans continued to appeal to the nation’s ideals. The Civil War, the Thirteenth Amendment ending slavery, and the Fourteenth Amendment establishing birthright citizenship marked major steps toward expanding freedom. The struggle continued into the twentieth century, culminating in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.
This episode explores why, despite its contradictions, the American creed has remained a powerful ideal worth embracing.
I grew up in a rural community in South Carolina. My father was a general laborer, and he, along with my mother and their eight children, were sharecroppers. I am their sixth child, and I spent my formative years picking cotton and plowing with a mule. I gained a burst of insight when I was 15 years old from an internal consciousness that told him I could do better with his life. I heeded the inspiration and enrolled in college, graduating with honors. I earned a Master of Arts from The Ohio State University and a doctorate from Miami University (Ohio). I received a Golieb post-doctoral fellowship from the New York University School of Law, where I enrolled in the first-year curriculum and the Legal History Seminar. I began teaching at Wilberforce University in Ohio. I also taught at the University of Cincinnati and was a long-time constitutional history professor at North Carolina State University. I was the inaugural director of the African American Studies Program at Mississippi State University. I have lectured and presented scholarly papers in the United States, Canada, and Europe. I presented at the American Society of Legal History, the British Legal History Association, the Southern Historical Association, and the Association of African American Life and History. I have lectured at the University of Washington, Cambridge University, and Keele University in the United Kingdom. My scholarly endeavors have taken me to three African countries, including Ghana, where the University of Ghana boasts an African Studies program.
As a speaker and workshop facilitator, I presented “Four Elements of Progressive Constitutionalism” in the Amicus Curiae Lecture series at Marshall University (2012); “Abraham Lincoln and Executive War Powers,” Wilmington College (2013); “Reconstruction and the Politics of Expedience,” Old Capitol Museum in Jackson, MS (2015); and facilitated teachers at summer seminars for the National Endowment for the Humanities at Georgia State University in 2016 and 2018.
Now retired from academic work, I am the founder of The Possibility-Action Network and host of The Possibility-Action Network Podcast. I am a speaker, transformational coach, and social entrepreneur.
