Can you handle the truth?

Details and facts are usually left out of stories. It happens in our personal and professional lives. It is especially true in our collective history.

Our country just turned 250 years old. Our city, Philadelphia, was the epicenter. Visitors walked our cobblestone streets, stood where the Declaration was signed and read the words “We hold these truths to be self-evident.”

It made us wonder – what are the truths all of us were holding when America turned 250?

There’s a good chance, in a country of 350 million people, we had different truths on our minds. Some of us were thinking about ideals like liberty, self-government and a more perfect union. Others, about the people who were excluded from enjoying these ideals. Both are true and neither is the complete story.

The concept of two truths is nothing new. It’s always been a part of our history. Consider Senator John C. Calhoun and Frederick Douglass who both lived in the 1800s. Two leaders, fifteen years apart, living in very different communities. They experienced a very different history and set of institutions.

In 1837, on the floor of the U.S. Senate, Former Vice President John C. Calhoun argued that slavery was “a positive good.” He suggested it had lifted enslaved people to a level of civilization they could never have reached on their own.

In 1852, Frederick Douglass gave a speech, What to the Slave is the Fourth of July, and denounced slavery as the “great sin and shame of America.” He would later stand at Independence Hall during America’s Centennial celebration and challenge the nation to extend the promises of liberty and equality to all Americans.

Both men spoke as Americans with total conviction. Do we know their names? Do we know their stories? Do we know their perspectives? They are America.

The history we inherit is not usually a lie. It’s an incomplete selection of events. Yet, the omissions from history are what complicate how we feel.

One month ago, on Juneteenth, a group of us from a community called White Men for Racial Justice launched something to hopefully fill some gaps. The Truth Trail is a free, self-guided walk through six sites in Philadelphia’s historic district where stories of freedom, slavery, faith, finance, entrepreneurship and democracy intersect.

Each stop holds multiple truths. Here are three examples:
∙ President’s House: enslaved men and women lived and worked in George Washington’s household
while the ideals of liberty were debated a few hundred feet away.
∙ Arch Street Friends Meeting House: Quakers helped build the moral case against slavery, yet many of
their own meetinghouses remained segregated.
∙St. George’s United Methodist Church: Richard Allen was told where he could and couldn’t sit, and he
went on to found the first independent Black denomination in American history.

We didn’t create this trail to replace a truth or declare the absolute truth. We simply want to add more. We don’t want to choose between celebrating our country or telling the truth about it. This is a false choice. America is great and imperfect. Our history is beautiful and painful. The Truth Trail encourages people to hold these messy and sometimes incompatible truths together.

Patriotism based on some of the story isn’t durable. Patriotism that is capable of holding all of it – the exceptional achievements and tragic failures – is much sturdier.

We’re a community of white men trying to learn, listen and take action toward building a more just country. We can handle the truth. All of it.

Geoff Beatty
Peter Burns
Michael D’Angelo
Jay Coen Gilbert
Kevin Eppler
Billy Lindstead Goldsmith
Brian Hanlon
Max Hayes
Andrew Knips
Lance Laver
Eric Mayer
Jerrod Modica
Shannon Mudd
Darren Sudman
Alan Wright