Hello from Down Under

We’re back! Thanks to everyone following our “50 Weeks That Shaped America” series—and those of you who have signed up to receive full-video, ad-free versions of our show every week by supporting This Day.

The 250th is still happening! Here’s how folks are celebrating, commemorating, and conceiving the moment, with some thoughts from Kellie Carter Jackson!

• 300-year-old ‘Witness Tree’ at Eutaw Springs undergoes restoration for America’s 250th | South Carolina Public Radio

  • I have a soft spot for trees, especially old ones and some of the longest living elements in nature. Arborists are doing the Lord’s work! Especially for a tree that is said to have witnessed revolutionary battles.

    

• Wyoming’s First Legal Whiskey Distillery Just Dropped a Bourbon to Celebrate America’s 250th

  • I like the name of this whiskey, “State of the Union,” and think it can be a very personal way to, as mentioned, “reflect on what endures—the land, the people, and the spirit of independence that continues to define America.” Cheers!

• ‘A great competitor’: A Utah student-athlete wins Trump’s Patriot Games

• Trump’s dismal Patriot Games were the Hunger Games ordered off Temu | US sports | The Guardian

  • Be for real!!! This is absurd! At what point is the administration going to realize no one want to take part in anything the White House has put together. But what made me nearly spit my coffee out was the jab, “Trump presented them with their trophies (small, probably bought off Temu).”

    

• From city streets to racetrack: Washington revs up for Freedom 250 Grand Prix

  • We’ve already established that the public is not interested in anything from the Freedom250 wheelhouse. Even free tickets are not an incentive, so I have no idea who’s paying for the Champions Club seating, which costs $5,000 per person, while luxury suites are priced upwards of $250,000. Again, be for real!

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• How We Created an Intricate Tapestry of Americans’ Roots - The New York Times

• Elbridge who? How the name of a forgotten founder lives on in the word ‘gerrymander’

  • What’s in a name? This story has sort of a comical twist. And I believe we talked about Elbridge Gerry on an episode on This Day about Gerrymandering.

• Trump is trying to spin U.S. history

  • You can’t turn history into a beauty pageant. It’s the good the bad, and the ugly. Deal with it.

• The Big Bend Region Is Losing Irreplaceable Pieces of US History | Sierra Club

  • This is truly sad and unnecessary. It’s giving, “We paved paradise and put up a parking lot…for surveillance.”

    

This week, I’m in the land Down Under! It’s my first time in Australia—Melbourne to be exact! G’day mate! I’m here for a panel discussion at the University of Melbourne on “The Black and African Experience” with two of my colleagues from Wellesley College. The room was filled with people from all over the world: America, the U.K., Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Ghana, Zambia, India, Myanmar, and Kenya to name a few. In that room, we were all trying to tackle the same problems of white supremacy, colonialism, migration, climate, A.I, and inclusion. We were all trying to make sense of the past, the present, and how we might create a better future. As a Black American in the room, I was reminded of just how similar our struggles are to others around the world and what it says about how we can create solidarity around just pursuits. Many people were also grieving the loss of scholar Jason Arday, whose memorial was this week. As fellow scholars, we lamented the cruel torment that led to the end of his life.

So much about the America 250 project has been self-indulgent and a way of looking so inward that no one else exists. America has curated itself as the center of the world. While it was difficult discussing the challenges that face Black academics and people of African descent all over the world, it was also refreshing to not talk about America, to not be consumed with nationalism. It felt like a break. The world is big, massive, and so much more than my own corner. However, at the end of the panel, two students approached me and my colleagues and said almost in unison, “We’re Wellesley students! We’re here studying abroad and we had to come see you!” And just like that, I was slightly shocked, it’s a small world too! I immediately embraced them. I was exuberant! Because even though we all hailed from a small liberal arts women’s college just outside of Boston, we were all there in Melbourne because we knew the world was bigger. We teach our students to be global thinkers and leaders. Then all I felt was pride. Maybe not American pride, but certainly pride for my institution. Solidarity can be near and far away.

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