The views and opinions expressed in this post are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views, policies, or positions of the Organization of American Historians.
Read the full text of the July 4, 1776, Declaration of Independence from which the following borrows words and phrases, as well as form and tone.
WHEN IN THE COURSE OF HUMAN EVENTS, it becomes necessary for all people to challenge the war on history, and to dissolve the political forces that are attacking history and historians, a decent respect to the opinions of humankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them:
WE hold these truths to be self-evident, that all people deserve good history, that they are endowed with unalienable rights to accurate history, that among these rights are access to information, the liberty to dissent, and the pursuit of scholarship; that to secure these rights, historical archives, associations, departments, landmarks, libraries, museums, sites, and societies are instituted, deriving their powers from the consent of their publics; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to preserve, protect, and defend their histories, laying their foundation on such principles and organizing their powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their happiness, safety, and wisdom. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that histories newly imposed by government shall not be challenged for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that humankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the false histories that have been dictated. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotic history, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such despots, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of history lovers; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to expose these hateful and hurtful new histories. The history of the present king is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over history. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
HE has refused his assent to accurate, balanced, and strong history, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
HE has attempted to dissolve and defund historical archives, committees, libraries, and museums, for opposing with firmness his invasions on histories of the people.
HE has usurped the constitutional roles and responsibilities of elected legislators when they have funded historical exhibits, fellowships, grants, and initiatives, arrogantly arrogating to himself the power to direct moneys to projects that present him as the nation’s greatest hero.
HE has made archivists, historians, and librarians dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
HE has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our histories, erase our pasts, and eat out their substance.
HE has combined with others to subject us to their historical propaganda, giving his assent to acts of pretended history by commissions, factions, foundations, parties, plagiarists, and pundits.
HE has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the merciless insurrectionists, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all strong histories.
HE has waged cruel war against history itself, violating its most sacred ethics and principles, seeking to enslave history and subjugate its practitioners in acts of barbarism rarely seen among despots and tyrants.
HE has censored histories of the people, prohibiting discussions of our diversity, our equity, and our inclusion.
HE has attempted to prevent us from addressing histories of genocide, nativism, racism, segregation, slavery, and sexism, attacking with distinctly perverted cruelty the advancement of knowledge about gay, lesbian, bisexual, lesbian, and trans history.
HE has issued impossibly contradictory demands for histories that celebrate our past, all the while attacking past laws, leaders, and legacies that he opposes.
In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated statements have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince of such darkness, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people who love history.
Nor have we been wanting in attentions to our brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their agents to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our authority, experience, and wisdom. We have informed them about rules of evidence, citation practices, ahistorical thinking, and distinctions between primary and secondary sources. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voices of justice and history. We must, therefore, hold them enemies of history.
WE, therefore, the representatives of united historians, appealing to the supreme judges of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by authority of the good historians of these lands, solemnly publish and declare, that these diverse but united people are, and of right ought to be, free and independent of historical propaganda; that they are absolved from all allegiance to weak history, and that all political connection between them and fake history, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent lovers of history, they have full power to do all acts and things which good historians may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Clio, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, our footnotes, and our sacred honor.
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Clio Patrio is the occasional nom de plume of Marc Stein, the Jamie and Phyllis Pasker Professor of History at San Francisco State University. He is the author of the forthcoming book Bicentennial: A Revolutionary History of the 1970s (University of Chicago Press). His other recent publications include The Stonewall Riots: A Documentary History (2019); Queer Public History: Essays on Scholarly Activism (2022); and Rethinking the Gay and Lesbian Movement (2nd edition, 2023). He is the director of the OutHistory website, the co-editor of the digital history database Queer Pasts, and the president-elect of the Organization of American Historians.