Reflections on America’s 250th Anniversary by rev. yvette shipman, Program Officer/Repair, Opportunity Fund
On July 4, 2026, America turns 250 years old. This feels less like a celebration and more like a crossroads, and I have learned to trust crossroads. Crossroads are not comfortable, and approaching them means something is shifting. Crossroads are an invitation to choose.
I am a Black woman and I have made peace with the fact that this holiday was not created with me in mind. America, while formed with lofty ideals, was built on the forced removal of Indigenous people and the theft and forced labor of Black bodies. We are witnessing our country continue the worst parts of its legacy in its slide towards authoritarianism, through mass deportations, detention centers, and surveillance. We are learning together what was always true for so many people, that the democracy currently being grieved by some was never fully real to begin with. It was a myth, one some of us were allowed to believe in longer than others. Yet today, with our eyes fully open, we are able to look past the myth and see the possibilities.
The America that once inspired the world, that beacon of possibility and collective care, we didn’t inherit that. We are that. This country’s founding documents may not have included me, but I was never waiting for an invitation. Neither were my ancestors. They dreamed futures into existence from the middle of nightmares. They bent time. They planted seeds in soil they would never rest in, for children they would never meet, who would one day stand here, transformed, still rising, tuned to something the architects of exclusion could never touch.
Our teachers know this. James Baldwin, Octavia Butler, Dr. Bruce Purnell, Audre Lorde – together they remind us that we have the power to transform emotional pain into purpose, to release the traumatic narrative, not forget it, but release it, and open our hearts to what comes next. They remind us that we are entangled. What diminishes you diminishes me. What liberates me clears a path for you, whether you know it or not. Collective care is not charity. It is the only way through.
In my work at Opportunity Fund my intention is to walk alongside the organizations doing this sacred work; those on the frontlines of social and economic justice, and the artists who, as Marc Bamuthi Joseph reminds us, “are the architects of a post-fear economy”.
So on this 250th year, approaching the choice this crossroads offers, I choose divine frequency. I choose truth, love, liberation, and living in my inherent dignity. I am venerating the dreamers. I am honoring the ancestors who held the future in trust for us.
America is also my home. I was born here, I can trace my ancestry back to the 1700s and I’m still working out what it means to me to be an American. And sitting in this complexity I mean it when I say: God bless America.
rev. yvette shipman, Program Officer/Repair, Opportunity Fund