You're listening to an Airwave Media podcast.

Ben Franklin's World is a production of the Omahundro Institute and is sponsored by the Colonial

Williamsburg Foundation.

Hello and welcome to episode 321 of Ben Franklin's World, the podcast dedicated to helping

you learn more about how the people and events of our early American past have shaped the

present day world we live in. And I'm your host, Liz Covart. Friend, I'm sorry to say I got caught in the latest COVID surge.

Tim and I both caught COVID in early January, and we're feeling much better now.

But that virus really put me out of commission for the better part of two weeks.

So this is why I'm rerunning one of my favorite episodes from 2020.

It was our Fourth of July episode that year.

It's called Who's Fourth of July?

Now, I really enjoyed producing episode 277.

My friends Jeff Brown of the Read to Lead podcast, and Adam McNeil,

who's a really talented young historian and podcaster.

They both let me their voice acting skills so that

we could hear passages from the Declaration of Independence and from an 1852 speech by Frederick

Douglas. Plus, we also had the chance to hear from and learn from to really brilliant historians.

Martha Jones of Johns Hopkins University and Christopher Bonner of the

University of Maryland. Together, we take you through the story of what the Fourth of July has meant

for early African Americans and some of the ways that black Americans have fought for and

seized their citizenship and rights as United States citizens. I find the history that we talk about in this

episode to be a powerful history. It's a history that investigates early American definitions

...