The United States has swept itself up in controversy in recent years. After political calls to censor speech and ban firearms from being owned by citizens—the first two amendments in the Bill of Rights—many are left wondering if this country can still be called the “land of the free.”
Reflecting back, here are three historic moments that prove that America is still the bastion of freedom she claims to be.
The First Black President
After 10 years as an Illinois congressman, Barack Hussein Obama became the first black president of the United States. But that wasn’t his first success as a black man in what he would call an historically racist country.
Obama graduated from Columbia University in 1983 and, five years later, enrolled in Harvard Law School where he succeeded in becoming the first black president of Harvard Law Review, one of the oldest student-edited publications in the country.
The election of 2008 sparked hope and inspiration for African Americans all over the country, who came out in overwhelming numbers to cast their ballot for Obama.
Hispanic Americans
“Representation” has been a central issue in American politics for many years. While the common conception of American politics is that for most of its history it has been dominated by “old white men,” Americans began electing minorities beginning over 100 years ago, at some of the highest points of racial tension.
José Antonio Romualdo Pacheco, a Republican, was the first Hispanic to represent a state in U.S. Congress. Elected in 1879 to serve as a California representative, Pacheco went on to become the state’s 12th governor.
Octaviano A. Larrazolo immigrated to the U.S. from New Mexico as a boy. In 1928, the Republican lawyer became the first Hispanic senator in U.S. history.
Revitalization of Free Speech
After years of Big Tech suppressing free speech, billionaire and Tesla CEO Elon Musk decided to acquire Twitter. While it is not unusual for billionaires to acquire whatever they like, with the acquisition came reinstatements of accounts that had been suspended.
One such account reinstated was that of former President Donald Trump, who became the first sitting president to be permanently suspended from one of the largest social media platforms in the world.
Musk also worked to release the “Twitter files,” documenting the platform’s suppression of The New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop scandal ahead of the 2020 presidential election. The move was to attempt to restore trust, transparency, and neutrality to the social media platform.
