"After all, It Was Their Vision of America That Prevailed"
Maurice A. Barboza
19th Street Baptist Church
December 2, 2004

Americans will come to recognize that while those black patriots were not present to debate the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution, they are nonetheless founding fathers and mothers.

Thirteen Februarys ago, thirteen Black History Months ago, in 1991, President Bush, President George Herbert Walker Bush, called upon the nation to support the Black Revolutionary War Patriots Memorial. In the Oval Office, after making a generous personal contribution himself, he said, "think about how much they must have loved this country, how they believed in its dreams. It's an astounding devotion. It's in a league by itself."

Three years before the President's remarks, in 1988, the U.S. Congress had declared the deeds of those patriots to be of "preeminent historical and lasting significance to the nation." And three years before that, in 1985, Congress passed a joint resolution honoring the role of blacks in the American Revolution. These were the early efforts -- the milestones and hurdles of which there are many -- that brought us to this beautiful and historic church for "An Evening of Unity."

Besides the more than 5,000 black soldiers and sailors of the American Revolution, the Patriots Memorial will honor the countless slaves who ran away to freedom or petitioned courts and legislatures for liberty during that era. This includes the estimated 10,000 African Americans who ran over to the British because they thought they might secure their freedom quicker that way. This memorial is not about war, patriotism or country; it is about the international yearning of human beings to be free.

The Patriots Memorial will stand on an acre of land, midway between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument. Twenty years ago, when I ascended the top step of DAR Constitution Hall and looked South across the Mall, I knew immediately that this was where the memorial had to stand. At the time, the World War II Memorial had not been built. There was no path through Constitution Gardens connecting the Vietnam Veterans Memorial to the Washington Monument. People suggested that perhaps there was a site with more traffic potential.

Not only is this site on hallowed ground, it is now on a heavily-traveled path that tourists of every hue and background use on their journey to comprehend American history in Washington's landscape. There are estimates that as many as 60 proposals for new memorials are currently pending at the National Park Service. Can you imagine how many other worthy projects have designs on this site.

Around it are the elegant Reflecting Pool and a memorial to the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Now, with the trees around the lake fully grown, you have to stretch to see the roof of DAR Constitution Hall. But its presence is felt. In a couple of years, this memorial's presence will be felt over there. This is not a remote corner of a ghetto or an isolated spot few will ever see. This is one of the most heavily traveled tourist areas in the nation. Over six (6) million people, from every city and town, visit there every year. They return home with photographs and memories they share with family and neighbors for years to come.

The idea for the memorial arose out of a photograph, a family, and a set of bizarre circumstances. I remember the moment that my eyes locked on an old photograph hanging in my grandmother's house. This was before I entered kindergarten. As an adult -- 26 years ago -- the fading image set me on a journey through microfilm, cemeteries, town halls, and the minds of family members. The quest was to find out why in my otherwise inviting hometown in Connecticut, where few people looked like us, that I felt like an outsider - despite the fact that I, too, was an American. There was no segregation or overt discrimination to render blunt clues to a child. Instead, Plainville, Connecticut in the 1950s was like what most of America is today - a place of subtle contradictions. So, I thought the clues might lie in who were my black and white ancestors and how my family came to be.

I believe that the dead can speak from the grave through objects, deeds, memories, and feelings they planted inside of us. So, I tried to listen. Eventually, what I heard was that the forgotten patriots and freedom seekers of the Revolutionary war never intended to remain forgotten forever. The clues they left for historians and for all of us are overwhelming. The message is clear: they want us to continue their fight to make this nation truly shine.

In the incomplete history lessons my white classmates and I sat through, the most important thing we absorbed was that the Declaration of Independence imposed on all citizens the duty to set things right. Wiser now, I also know that this includes pruning the still painful thorns concealed in the founding fathers' laurels, as well as those passed on to their descendants.

The Patriots Memorial will be a symbol for our time, for all time, and for all people. Former congressman Parren J. Mitchell of Maryland -- testifying before Congress in 1985 -- said that on this site, the memorial will remind us that "we've been there fighting and dying, from the Revolution to Vietnam." He meant all of us -- together.

Race relations in America require improvement and constant attention. Blacks, whites, and those of colors in between, coexist uneasily in our cities and towns. Violence and recrimination are commonplace. Mindless brutality can occur in any city at any moment. Demagoguery, suspicion and prejudice obstruct the pathways to understanding. Individual security and national harmony are threatened.

The memorial will challenge stereotypes, improve race relations and add a permanent work of art, and potent message, to the nation's landscape. The memorial seeks to address racial divisiveness by using common history as a tool to promote "One Nation."

We are the heirs of over 350 years of stereotypes and an incomplete history -- that is not our doing. It's no accident that some whites may discriminate or that some blacks indiscriminately hate. America pays a high price for bigotry and hatred that dwarfs the balance of trade deficit. If graduates don't learn how to get along with each other before they leave school, they won't do much better at work. This devalues the world's most significant multicultural society in the eyes of our competitors.

The Patriots Foundation may be in a race against a Congressional deadline. The site will be forfeited unless the funds are raised by October 2005. But America is in a race against a wedge of divisiveness being driven deeper into the nation's soul.

The Patriots Memorial will not be a piece of marble and granite anchored to the earth to bear witness to the deeds of one people. It was not proposed because memorials in Washington that honor African Americans are outnumbered 50 to 1 by those that honor everyone else. We weren't out to rectify a memorial imbalance or to say do for us what America has done for other Americans. If we were, we would be trivializing, and breaking faith with, the values, patriotism and selflessness of the people we seek to honor.

Contrary to popular knowledge most blacks fought side-by-side with whites in all of the major battles, from Lexington and Concord to Yorktown. Amazingly enough, some endured horrible hardships for the entire duration. The heroic First Rhode Island Regiment is an example of one of just a few all-black regiments.

Most slaves volunteered to serve as substitutes for their masters and others in exchange for promises of freedom. Free blacks risked life and limb in the hopes of winning equal rights. They made conscious choices as did thousands of slaves who served as guides, spies, messengers and nurses. There were many heroes.

These black patriots left a legacy. They organized churches and self-help groups that would light the way for future generations. They used the courts to file freedom suits, sought to vote, and pleaded for equal education opportunity. At least one veteran ran for public office in Maryland. They formed family units whose immediate off-spring served America in other wars, including the Civil War. They weren't just picking cotton, singing spirituals and waiting for a savior. Their faith told them that they were God's instrument for justice.

When the test came as to whether the slaves who served would be re-enslaved, the governor of Virginia asked the legislature for authority to prosecute masters who might back out on their promises. A law was passed that says those black patriots "contributed towards the establishment of American liberty and independence."

What is the value of this history and why are we so intent on seeing it memorialized on the Mall? One of our principal sponsors, Connecticut Congresswoman Nancy L. Johnson, said it best: "The most powerful weapon against prejudice is the knowledge that our freedom and independence are the consequence of the combined efforts of all Americans black and white. The inaccurate record of American history, neglecting the black role, has helped to perpetuate discrimination based on ignorance."

All of us were taught the same incomplete history. It's no wonder that we treat one another so poorly. But we need not be captives of that history. It would be wrong to condemn any of our fellow Americans to the dark tunnel of bigotry when we have the power to show them the way out. Many Americans have never been shown a positive image of a black person. When such a person is a respondent in an anonymous poll, he says that blacks don't work as hard as whites, that they prefer to live off welfare; that they are violence-prone; that they are less intelligent and that blacks are less patriotic than whites.

Many blacks fail to associate the white person they pass on the street with the long train of white people who stood beside their ancestors in the fight for freedom and equality. Long before two white students and a black man -- Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner -- sacrificed their lives that Freedom Summer in Philadelphia, Mississippi 40 years ago this June, white heroes put their lives and livelihoods on the line for freedom. The lawyer Theodore Sedgwick won a case in Massachusetts just after the Revolution that released Elizabeth Freeman from bondage and ended slavery there. John Quincy Adams fought the southern slave power in Congress with tenacity, filing petition after petition to end slavery.

My own great great grandfather, John Curtis Gay, a white man from Maine, gave his life for the cause of freedom during the Civil War when he was gunned down at Cold Harbor, Virginia. But for the photograph he took days before, and which was passed down to me, there would be no Black Revolutionary War Patriots Memorial. That was the clue that piqued my curiosity and that brought me up the steps to this sacred place this evening.

In actions spanning two centuries, they, and the black patriots, struggled to refashion the U.S. Constitution of 1787 into the image of the Declaration of Independence. They believed that "all men are created equal," was a far higher principle upon which to base a "revolution" than the right -- many claimed as divine -- to hold another human being in bondage. Instead of being liberated, slaves were branded three-fifths a person.

For nearly two hundred years, slave holders and the upholders of Jim Crow, literally, stuffed their slaves into the ballot box or drove them away from the polls. It was "one white man, 100 slaves, 61 votes." Oh, what power they wielded until 1963 to enrich themselves, twist history, and endanger national security by creating a citizenry that distrusts one another.

Despite these horrors, just as it is wrong to prejudge a black person, it is wrong to prejudge a white person and the spirits on their family tree. Any project to honor the historical contributions of blacks also will illuminate those white patriots who aided, or simply, respected their struggle.

If those among us who are so visually and psychologically-impaired when it comes to knowing the true nature of blacks and whites were instead addicted to alcohol or drugs, we would say that they had a disease and that society has an obligation to treat them medically -- and to treat them compassionately. We say, let's treat them with a massive dose of the truth about America's past. And no, we're not tearing down the country, we're building it up.

I have some personal experience in this area. For four years, from 1980 to 1984, I watched my dear aunt, Lena Santos Ferguson, fight bigotry to become a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution. Although only one of my grandparents was born in the U.S., and I am the son of an immigrant from the Cape Verde Islands, three soldiers of the American Revolution are my ancestors. I'm honored to be their five-generations-removed grandson, but I wish one day that I'll also discover one who is black. And no, we are not trying to tear down the country, or its history, we are building it up.

When the national controversy about my aunt ended successfully, I decided that a memorial to black patriots should be built within eye-view of DAR Constitution Hall -- the place where black opera singer Marian Anderson was barred from performing in 1939. Poetically, the DAR was among the first organizations to lend support. My aunt's settlement agreement, signed in 1984, required the DAR to bar discrimination in membership and identify every black soldier who served in the war for Independence. They still have work to do; but, today, over 2,000 black soldiers are now listed in a book available to the public and available to any black woman who wants to claim her heritage, join the DAR, and say, "my ancestor helped found America, too."

For the most part, the black patriots of the American Revolution were dead and forgotten by the Civil War. If The Patriots Foundation had the power to reincarnate them on the Mall for just one evening, we could raise the memorial's construction funds overnight.

Since that won't happen, the next best thing would be for faith based organizations to lead a campaign in our cities great and small that would resurrect the spirit of those patriots and make everyone feel we have a future as one nation. This would give every citizen a chance to buy both a spiritual and a financial stake in the memorial. Doing so could transform this "Evening of Unity" into a future of perpetual unity.

The amount of money you raise is as important as the awareness that your support creates. We welcome any and all contributions -- with equal gratitude. With a vested interest in the memorial, thousands of Americans will flock to the site for the dedication -- reminiscent of Marian Anderson's 1939 concert at the Lincoln Memorial and the 1963 March on Washington.

The potential of your work to do good is immeasurable. A few years from now, when visitors return home after experiencing The Patriots Memorial, they will see black people as if through a new set of eyes. If they happen to be black, the likeness that they used to see in a mirror will be changed forever -- as well as their concept of fellow blacks and fellow whites.

Black kids, bombarded by false notions of who they are, will be able to peel back the mask of insecurity and rise to the true level of their potential. When they come to understand that common people can be uncommonly heroic and honorable -- even slaves -- they will be more respectful of their parents, teachers and those around them.

We will learn that millions of black men, women and children had "a dream that was deeply rooted in the American dream" generations before Martin Luther King, Jr. was born -- and that they acted on that dream. We will learn that blacks began seeking freedom and equality more than 100 years before the Emancipation Proclamation.

The bronze relief and freestanding figures of black patriots coming to life on the national Mall will change us forever. No one who publishes books, teaches or makes motion pictures will be able to ignore this history again. Skeptics around the world might never again have cause to question if America practices the principles it preaches.

Americans will come to recognize that while those black patriots were not present to debate the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution, they are nonetheless founding fathers and mothers.

After all, it was their vision of America that prevailed.