A Church, A Bridge, A Bar: Freedom Places

In an American “Freedom Atlas” some special sacred places would have a star: Plymouth Rock, Philadelphia, Lexington and Concord, Gettysburg, Arlington National Cemetery. 

In his inaugural address this week President Obama firmly marked three more freedom places on the map: Seneca Falls, Selma, Stonewall.  He said:

We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths—that all of us are created equal—is the star that guides us still, just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall, just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great Mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone, to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth.

At Seneca Falls, New York in 1858, 300 women and men attended the first US Women’s Rights Convention, held in the Wesleyan Methodist Chapel, the only large meeting place in Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s small hometown willing to host the event.   In a controversial vote (was the nation ready?) only 100 attendees signed the Declaration of Sentiments advocating women’s right to vote, which was not granted until 1920.  The only African American there, abolitionist Frederick Douglass, said he would not accept the right to vote as a black man if women were denied suffrage.

Bloody Sunday 1965In 1965 Martin Luther King, Jr. led thousands of civil rights marchers, including many white clergy King had asked to come, across the Edmund Pettus Bridge (named for a general in the Confederate army) on the way from Selma, Alabama to the state capitol in Montgomery.  President Lyndon Johnson was among those who watched on national TV as state troopers brutally beat the marchers; two days later he presented the Voting Rights Act to Congress.

And in 1969 a police raid on the Stonewall gay bar on Christopher Street in New York City’s Greenwich Village led to days of spontaneous street riots by gay and straight supporters of gay rights, and the first newspaper coverage of these regular raids. Stonewall,  a popular gathering place, was the only gay bar in town that allowed dancing.  The raid and riots sparked the gay rights movement; Gay Pride parades, which began the following year, are often held in late June on the anniversary of Stonewall.

One participant wrote of that night:

We all had a collective feeling like we'd had enough of this kind of shit. It wasn't anything tangible anybody said to anyone else, it was just kind of like everything over the years had come to a head on that one particular night in the one particular place, and it was not an organized demonstration destruction. … And we felt that we had freedom at last, or freedom to at least show that we demanded freedom. We weren't going to be walking meekly in the night and letting them shove us around—it's like standing your ground for the first time and in a really strong way, and that's what caught the police by surprise. There was something in the air, freedom a long time overdue, and we're going to fight for it.

Stonewall Bar is now on the Federal Register of Historic Places.  As are Seneca Falls and Selma.

In his address, after linking Stonewall to Selma and Seneca Falls, Obama continued:

It is now our generation's task to carry on what those pioneers began. For our journey is not complete until our wives, our mothers, and daughters can earn a living equal to their efforts. Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law -- for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.

Stonewall Inn 1969These two words “Stonewall” and “gay” have never before been spoken in a presidential inaugural address.   Nor linked with Seneca Fall and Selma.  A trinity of freedom stars in the sky map of America.

“That all of us are created equal is the star that guides us still, as it did our forebears….” was part of Obama’s uniting theme of American on a journey; “When times change, so must we.”   Good professor that he is, Obama reminded us of our history, a people always moving, on a journey, moving across a state, a bridge, a barricade.

America has many churches, many bridges, many bars.  They are not all emblematic of freedom.  Churches can exclude and condemn, bridges go to nowhere, bars enable crushing addictions.

But the Wesleyan church in Seneca Falls, and the Quaker and Congregational faith of many of the early women’s rights advocates, were carrying on the journeys of their forebears, the inclusive freedom crowds led by Moses and Jesus.  On that hot day in 1858 both men and women, black and white advocated that all people are created equal.

The Alaska “Bridge to Nowhere” was a Republican pork taxpayer boondoggle.   That the Edmund Pettus Bridge became synonymous with freedom certainly made the Confederate racist turn in his grave.  One hopes he heard both the whites and blacks, as they sang that good traveling song, the Negro National Anthem: “stony the road we trod, bitter the chastening rod…yet with a steady beat have not our weary feet come the place for which our fathers sighed?”

And for the gays and lesbians at Stonewall, the bar was the only safe place (until the raid) to be themselves, and to do that wonderful liberating action – dancing!  Revolutionaries have always met in bars; bar meetings fueled the passions of the American Revolution.  And dancing!  Well, dancing has opened many a heart to freedom and possibility.

Thanks, President Obama, for reminding us of these bold freedom places; church, bridge, bar.

Copyright © 2013 Deborah Streeter