What to a young American is the 4th of July?

Freedom 250's mobile exhibit on American history accentuates the positive, complains Laura Meckler in the Washington Post.

The Declaration’s assertion that “all men are created equal” is the theme for six federally funded “Freedom Trucks,” which each contain a two-room exhibit about the founding of the United States, she writes. "At a time of fierce debate over how to teach American history, particularly around issues of race, the Freedom Trucks" tell "a patriotic, positive story of core American values and exceptionalism."

Heaven forfend.

Poet Phyllis Wheatley is one of the American heroes featured in the Freedom Truck exhibit.

"Visitors learn inspiring stories of enslaved people who overcame odds, but not about those who, as was typically the case, endured violent and inhumane conditions," she writes.

The trucks will visit nearly every state by the end of the year, visiting schools, colleges, fairgrounds, parks and community events. Hillsdale College's Matthew Spalding, who directed the 1776 Commission at the end of the first Trump administration, wrote most of the content, and Prager U supplied the visuals.

The American Revolution established the principle of human equality, said Spalding. “What do we want to teach people who go through a museum like this? That it’s a country that is so problematic that it’s not worth celebrating? It was the overcoming of slavery.”

The exhibit features abolitionist Frederick Douglass’s famous speech, What to the slave is the Fourth of July?, which invokes the Declaration of Independence in making his case for abolishing slavery, writes Meckler. "But it doesn't quote the part where he said celebrating the Fourth "is a sham" for the enslaved. American prayers and sermons are “mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.”

The exhibit also quotes the Northwest Ordinance of 1787: “The utmost good faith shall always be observed toward the Indians their lands and property shall never be taken from them without their consent.” But it doesn't tell visitors that promise was broken, she writes.

OK, Freedom 250 is a celebration of America. It's patriotic. For us oldsters, it's a traditional view. For younger and middle-aged Americans, raised to savor America's sins, the Freedom Truck could be a revelation.

“Regardless of who’s doing it, probably a truck is not going to be able to provide an adequate picture of all the different elements of the American story, said Josh Dunn, executive director of Institute of American Civics at the University of Tennessee. ” However, “when I see Frederick Douglass’s speech being quoted, it’s hard for me not to be excited about that. My hope is that people see that and they think, ‘Maybe I should go read all of that speech.’”

Douglass concluded that the Constitution is "a glorious liberty document," writes David A. Price in The Free Press. He told Americans to "stand by the principles" of the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."