‘E pluribus unum’ still matters

As America turns 250, the promise remains unfinished – and the meaning of “out of many, one” should resonate

#Opinion • 12:00 p.m. July 5, 2026

On Saturday, America turned 250.

That is something.

Not many countries get this far. Not many republics hold together this long. We have been through civil war, depressions, assassinations, terrorist attacks, bad leaders, brave leaders, and ordinary days when regular people kept the whole thing moving.

So yes, we celebrated it.

Put out the flag. Fired up the grill. Let the kids stay up late enough to see the sky light up.

But do not pretend the story is clean.

It never has been.

The promise and the wound

America was born with a promise in one hand and a contradiction in the other. The promise was bold enough to change the world. The contradiction was deep enough to scar generations.

Liberty belongs to the people, not kings. Government answers to citizens, not the other way around. All men are created equal.

But slavery was still legal. Native people were already in the way of land others wanted. Women had no vote. Whole groups of people were useful enough to build the country, feed it, fight for it and bury their dead in it – but not always welcome enough to fully belong to it.

That is not anti-American history. That is American history. And 250 years later, we ought to be grown-up enough to say so.

The hard parts are not side notes. They run right down the middle.

Slavery was not a bad habit. It was law, money, blood, families torn apart, and labor stolen by force.

The Trail of Tears was not a misunderstanding between neighbors. It was removal. It was policy. It was a government deciding Native people could be pushed out because somebody else wanted what they had.

Jim Crow was not just old prejudice in old photographs. It was a system built to keep Black Americans from voting, learning, owning, moving, and living as full citizens.

Those things happened here.

So did the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. So did redlining. So did broken treaties. So did the long, ugly pattern of turning immigrants into scapegoats whenever fear needed a face.

Humbly, most of us came from immigrants, including you and me. Our forefathers were not born from this soil. They came here looking for room, work, safety, and a chance.

Then, somewhere along the way, too many of us decided that our people had arrived early enough to close the door behind them. As if belonging is a family heirloom instead of a promise.

That is entitlement dressed up as patriotism.

Every generation has found its own way to draw the circle too small.

That may be the great American failure. We keep saying “one nation,” then arguing over who gets counted.

You do not have to go to Washington to see that. Every courthouse, classroom, church pew and kitchen table in Moore County has wrestled with who gets heard and who gets overlooked.

Many

That is why E pluribus unum still matters.

Out of many, one.

Not out of one, one.

Many.

The many includes the men who signed the Declaration and the people they left out of it. It includes the enslaved people who built wealth they could not share. It includes the Native nations who were here before America had a name. It includes women who held families, farms, churches and classrooms together and still had to fight for a ballot.

It includes immigrants who laid track, picked crops, opened stores, started over, served in uniform and loved a country that did not always love them back. It includes the people who never make the speeches but keep the country breathing.

Unity does not mean we sand all that down until everybody looks the same in the history book. It does not mean silence. It does not mean telling people to get over wounds the country has never fully admitted.

Real unity starts by telling the truth and staying at the table anyway.

Honest enough to love it

Frederick Douglass forced the country to hear the hypocrisy in its own birthday. Harriet Tubman made freedom something you could follow through the dark. Ida B. Wells told the truth when the truth could get her killed. The civil rights marchers did not hate America.

They believed the country should finally live up to its own words.

We forget that too easily. The people who challenged this country most fiercely were often the ones who believed most deeply in its promise. They were not trying to tear the experiment down. They were trying to make it honest.

That work is still in front of us. A 250th birthday is a good time to be grateful. It is also a good time to look around and ask who still gets treated like a guest in a country they helped build.

Who still has to prove they belong? Who still hears freedom as a slogan, but not as a daily fact? Who still gets a harder time at the ballot box, the bank counter, the schoolhouse door or the courthouse steps?

Those are hard questions.

Good. The flag can handle them. A serious country does not need to be lied to.

Not fewer. More.

That is the choice as America turns 250. We can tell the easy story, all fireworks and no scars. Or we can tell the true one: that this nation has failed badly, corrected slowly, widened painfully and survived because people kept insisting the promise belonged to more of us.

Not fewer. More – that is the lesson of 250 years.

The American experiment does not work when “one” is used to erase the “many.” It works when the many are seen, heard, protected and counted.

So we celebrated Saturday, and we meant it. Raised the flag. Lit the fuse. Grateful for this country, because gratitude is right.

Now, tell the truth, because truth is required: America is not finished. ... It never has been.

But if we want to be one nation, stop acting like “many” is the problem.