Are All Black Men Created Equal? Some Black Jaxons say NO!

As the U.S. celebrates the anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, some Black people across Northeast Florida question whether the country is living up to the ideals the signees evoked 250 years ago.

July 3, 2026 Staff Local 0
Dr. Johnetta Cole

by Will Brown| Jax Today

‘All men are created equal’

Anthropologist Johnnetta Betsch Cole, a Jacksonville native who is president emerita of both   Spelman College and Bennett College, has seen plenty over the last 90 years but no period as distinct as this, she says.

“I think it’s not an overstatement that we are in a period right now, all over the United States of America, where freedoms that were declared for us are continuously being removed,” Cole tells Jacksonville Today. “This is a period like nothing we have seen before. Have we seen struggle? Yes. Have we seen challenges to our civil rights? Yes. But, today, across our country, the very tenets of democracy are being chipped away.”
Dr. Johnnetta Cole imparts wisdom on Community Foundation of Northeast Florida CEO Isaiah Oliver after the 2025 OneJax Humanitarian Awards on May 1, 2025. OneJax celebrated five community champions for their decades of advocacy, activism, volunteerism and public services during its 2025 Humanitarian Awards ceremony. | Photo by Will Brown

Black people have been central to American public policy and freedom since before July 4, 1776.

An earlier draft of the Declaration of Independence contained a clause that decried slavery in the British colonies.

It alleged Britain’s King George III “has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere to incur miserable death in their transportation thither.”

It was removed from the final draft.

South Carolina — a colony that was dependent on agriculture produced at forced labor camps — was among two colonies that voted against the declaration on July 1, 1776.

Pennsylvania was the other. Delaware was undecided, and New York abstained.

A day later, on July 2, 1776, 12 of the 13 colonies approved the declaration. New York, once again, abstained.

It was approved July 4.

Today, Cole says, the ethos that men like Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and Eldridge Gerry — for whom the term gerrymandering is named after — committed to when they signed is being systemically attacked in Florida.

“Contradictions are not new to us,” Cole says. “Thomas Jefferson, who signed that Declaration of Independence, had enslaved people. Contradiction is a mild term to use. We, as a people — and I would say all marginalized people, whether based on their race, their gender, their sexual orientation, their religion, their age, their ability or disability — contradictions are not new to us.”

For complete story visit:  Are these truths self-evident at America 250? Some Black Jaxsons say no. | Jacksonville Today