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\nDr. Johnetta Cole<\/p>\n
\nDr. Johnetta Cole<\/p>\n
by Will Brown| Jax Today<\/p>\n
\u2018All men are created equal\u2019<\/p>\n
Anthropologist Johnnetta Betsch Cole, a Jacksonville native who is president emerita of both \u00a0 Spelman College and Bennett College, has seen plenty over the last 90 years but no period as distinct as this, she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s not an overstatement that we are in a period right now, all over the United States of America, where freedoms that were declared for us are continuously being removed,\u201d Cole tells Jacksonville Today. \u201cThis is a period like nothing we have seen before. Have we seen struggle? Yes. Have we seen challenges to our civil rights? Yes. But, today, across our country, the very tenets of democracy are being chipped away.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Dr. Johnnetta Cole imparts wisdom on Community Foundation of Northeast Florida CEO Isaiah Oliver after the 2025 OneJax Humanitarian Awards on May 1, 2025. OneJax celebrated five community champions for their decades of advocacy, activism, volunteerism and public services during its 2025 Humanitarian Awards ceremony. | Photo by Will Brown<\/p>\n
Black people have been central to\u00a0American public policy and freedom<\/a>\u00a0since before July 4, 1776.<\/p>\n An earlier draft of the Declaration of Independence contained a clause that decried slavery in the British colonies.<\/p>\n It alleged Britain\u2019s King George III \u201chas waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere to incur miserable death in their transportation thither.\u201d<\/p>\n It was removed from the final draft.<\/p>\n South Carolina \u2014 a colony that was dependent on agriculture produced at forced labor camps \u2014 was among two colonies that\u00a0voted against the declaration on July 1, 1776<\/a>.<\/p>\n Pennsylvania was the other. Delaware was undecided, and New York abstained.<\/p>\n A day later, on July 2, 1776, 12 of the 13 colonies approved the declaration. New York, once again, abstained.<\/p>\n It was approved July 4.<\/p>\n Today, Cole says, the ethos that men like Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and Eldridge Gerry \u2014 for whom the term gerrymandering is named after \u2014 committed to when they signed is being systemically attacked in Florida.<\/p>\n \u201cContradictions are not new to us,\u201d Cole says. \u201cThomas Jefferson, who signed that Declaration of Independence, had enslaved people. Contradiction is a mild term to use. We, as a people \u2014 and I would say all marginalized people, whether based on their race, their gender, their sexual orientation, their religion, their age, their ability or disability \u2014 contradictions are not new to us.\u201d<\/p>\n