4th Of July, Protest, The Constitution and Slavery (Some Sunday Context)

This Day

Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia

History

4.6 • 982 Ratings

🗓️ 29 June 2025

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This episode is part of our "Some Sunday Context" series where we are bringing you episodes from the archives and new conversations that try to give you a little historical perspective on current events. Today, an episode we recorded in 2021 about an anti-slavery protest in 1854, and how it brought up fundamental questions about our founding documents, freedom, and more.

We'll be back with new episodes on Tuesday -- and don't forget to sign up for our newsletter for big new project coming soon!

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everyone, Jody Abergan here. Welcome to This Day, a history show from Radiotopia.
0:07.1	Now, on Sundays from time to time, we try and do these episodes that we call Some Sunday context,
0:12.2	giving you a little historical perspective on the big stories of the moment. And Lord knows,
0:17.1	coming off the week we just had, we need some perspective. One of the big stories this past week was that we saw a number of Supreme Court rulings
0:24.5	that are redefining executive power and judicial power, offering support for many of the
0:30.0	moves that the Trump administration is taking and maybe more importantly, undermining
0:34.0	some of the checks on those moves from the judiciary.
0:37.4	Thinking about that and thinking
0:38.6	about some important perspective, I almost re-ran an episode here that we did on court packing,
0:44.0	attempts to try and reshape and expand the court in order to rebalance power. Because a lot of people,
0:50.1	at least a lot of progressives, think that one of the only ways to really turn things around,
0:54.8	given the current makeup of the Supreme Court, will be to reshape the judiciary.
0:59.6	So we're not going to run that here, but if you want to go listen to the episode we did on
1:02.5	FDR's failed attempt to pack the courts, you can go find that in the archives.
1:06.7	We'll post a link to it on social and in the newsletter.
1:09.7	But instead, for some context today, here is an episode tied to 4th of July.
1:14.0	It is indeed 4th of July week here in the United States.
1:17.0	And yes, it's a great time for barbecues and beaches and swimming.
1:20.3	And I will be doing all three of those later this week.
1:23.2	But I suppose it's as good of a time as any to also think about this country's founding principles,
1:28.4	founding documents, and that thorny question about what this American experiment of ours is really
1:33.7	all about. So here's an episode we did about an anti-slavery protest that took place on the 4th of
	...

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