As the United States prepares to mark its 250th anniversary, there will be parades, commemorations, and renewed attention to the nation’s founding ideals. But the celebration is already raising a harder question. What, exactly, are we choosing to honor?

The Trump administration recently announced plans to bring several controversial statues to Washington, D.C., including the temporary installation of an equestrian statue of Caesar Rodney in Freedom Plaza. Rodney was a member of the Continental Congress that signed the Declaration of Independence and a noted slaveowner, owning as many as 200 enslaved people. His statue was taken down in 2020 during racial justice protests in Wilmington, Delaware but Trump has lauded Rodney as “an American legend.”  

To be sure, this issue is bigger than Rodney. For instance, in 2025, Trump reinstalled a statue of the Confederate General Albert Pike in D.C.’s Judiciary Square, which had been removed following the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests. The Trump White House even went so far as to install a replica of a statue of Christopher Columbus, which had been toppled and thrown into Baltimore’s inner harbor in 2020 by protestors because of Columbus’ role in the killing and enslaving of indigenous people.

But America’s 250th should not become an active celebration of people who enslaved other human beings. 

Too often, slavery is treated in public discourse as something distant, sealed off in the nineteenth century. It is spoken about as if it belongs to a world that no longer touches us. That version of history may be convenient. It is also wrong.

In my family, slavery is not abstract history. It is memory. My great-aunt is 91.........

© Time