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“With a single sheet of parchment and 56 signatures, America began the greatest political journey in human history,” declared Donald Trump, announcing the nation’s upcoming 250th anniversary.

Under Trump’s direction, a sweeping federal initiative — branded as both America 250 and the “Freedom 250” campaign — has launched a full year of patriotic programming. The Salute to America 250 Task Force promises nationwide festivities, public-private partnerships, classroom materials, and civic rituals designed to ensure that, as Trump put it, “our youth will be taught to love America with all of their heart and all of their soul.” Not to inquire about the nation’s origin, not to question the contradictions of those who declared liberty for all while organizing one of the largest systems of human bondage ever created, but rather to internalize devotion.

The message is unmistakable: freedom began 250 years ago. The meaning is clear: the story of the U.S. is the story of freedom unfolding. But there is another anniversary this year — one twice as old, largely forgotten, and far more dangerous to remember because it shows us true liberation.

In 1526 — long before the more renowned dates that anchor the nation’s story of 1619 and 1776 — enslaved Africans rose up and freed themselves on the land that would eventually become the United States.

You would expect MAGA memory-hole historians — obsessed with banning books, declaring that slavery was of “personal benefit” to enslaved people, and firing educators who teach honestly about systemic racism — to erase any accounts of this event. What is more troubling is how rarely it appears in mainstream history books, or even in spaces committed to truth-telling — among educators and even within movements for Black liberation — muting the earliest act of resistance to the enslavement of Africans on this land.

Trump Wants to Bury Slavery. My Family Went South to Unearth It.

There is another anniversary this year — one twice as old, largely forgotten, and far more dangerous to remember because it shows us true liberation.

There is another anniversary this year — one twice as old, largely forgotten, and far more dangerous to remember because it shows us true liberation.

To be clear, many historians and educators have worked courageously to challenge dominant myths about the nation’s founding. Initiatives like The 1619 Project have played a transformative role in reshaping public understanding by centering the arrival of enslaved Africans in Virginia in 1619 as a foundational moment for understanding U.S. society. By marking the 400th anniversary in 2019, the project sparked a national dialogue that forced the country to begin to reckon with the central role of slavery in shaping its economy, politics, and culture. It reframed the founding of the United States not simply as a story of liberty in 1776, but as a contradiction between ideals of freedom and the reality of racialized bondage — a contradiction that continues to define the nation.

1619 is a vital date to understand because it marks the first documented arrival of enslaved Africans to an English colony in North America.

But even this vital reframing stops short of a more complete history: The first enslaved Africans did not arrive in North America in 1619. They arrived nearly a century earlier, when Spanish ships brought enslaved Africans to North America in 1526.

This year marks not only 500 years since the first Africans were stolen from their continent and trafficked to land that would become the United States, but also the beginning of resistance to African enslavement on North American soil. They did not submit. They rebelled, burned down the colony that enslaved them, and escaped into the surrounding land — launching a lineage of resistance and revealing what freedom requires.

At a moment........

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