The 4th of July is a real holiday.

My grandfather, Hezekiah Adams had a 3rd grade education and worked as a sharecropper for most of his life in North Carolina and South Carolina.  He had family members lynched, children attacked by dogs and lived a very tough and understated life.  Yet when I was on my way to Washington, DC for graduate school and to work at the Department of Justice in the 1990’s his words as I passed through Gastonia, NC were, “You better love this country!  Only in America can the grandbaby of a nobody go to work for the president.”  Yes, I was going to work for the Attorney General Janet Reno but he took it that I was going to work for President Bill Clinton.  

The 4th of July was always a huge holiday in my home growing up and I make it big now for my children.  In my home it meant fireworks, family, food, fun.  The other thing that happened on the fourth is that my brother, sister and I always got a good talking to about what it meant to us. The independence that was signed for and then battled over is a precious thing.

Even with the understanding that the thoughts put forward that afternoon in Philadelphia weren’t meant specifically for me, I do give credence to the fact that I am a full beneficiary of the outcome of those 55 men signing the Declaration of Independence.

While the United States of America collectively enjoys the spoils and responsibility that comes with independence, individually we enjoy a freedom of movement, freedom of expression and freedom of economic determination that most countries around the world struggle to offer its citizens.

At some point during the celebration my father and mother would tell my brother, my sister and I something to the fact, “You see all of these fireworks?  Now imagine they were bombs, fires and gunshots.  The flag was still there in the morning because it stood for something and meant something.  It means something now for you too.  If that flag can make it, you can too.  The bombs you have to fight are racism, not going to the best schools and not living around the best people and not having the advantages of many other kids.”

My father used to keep it raw and say, “I don’t care if you poor, fat and black!  No excuses for not getting it done in America.  This is the spot baby!”

At the end of the day, that was the message I needed to grow up with in the neighborhood where I grew up.  The message, as I later figured out, is actually the same for everyone.  This country was built on an ideal and though that ideal struggled to show itself for many and still might, self reliance, hard work, audacity and sometimes sheer will is enough for anyone to find success in America. 

Do some people have to work harder?  Yes.  Do you have to work a little harder if you don’t come from a family with financial power or workplace authority? Yes.  Are some people born on third base and act like they hit a triple?  Yes.   

To me, that’s the life worth living.  My parents worked as hard as they could to get my brother, sister and I to first base.  I’m going to work as hard as I can to get my kids to second base and then hopefully my kids keep it going.  Every generation gets better.

Of course the bombs that I refer to are not the bombs that Francis Scott Key wrote about, after witnessing the bombardment of Fort McHenry by the British Royal Navy ships in Chesapeake Bay. But that’s what that story has always meant to me. “Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there” has always meant going through tough times but still having the resolve, the determination and the guts to see the job through to the other side where success sometimes hides herself.

The 4^th of July is a holiday about respect, about remembrance, about appreciation.  I just had a great weekend with family and friends.  If you had one as well but didn’t talk to your kids about why, then sit them down and have that conversation.  You will all be better off having told the story and they will be better off having understood the accountability and responsibility that comes with the greatest independence in the world.