Thomas Jefferson's grave at Monticello—photo I took on July 3, 2026. Jefferson died on July 4, 1826, fifty years to the day after the Declaration of Independence.
The year was 1954.
The ground was red—not the color of blood but of clay—a color now caked into my father’s trousers. Chuba was a boy, crouching, searching. Arms loose and breathing relaxed. There! He spotted his target in the distance, a big green grasshopper unaware its safety hung in the balance. Fire—he released his grip and the stone streaked through the summer air in Bukuru, Nigeria.
* * *
The year was 1965.
The ground was red—not the color of clay but of blood—a color now caked into their trousers. Bloody Sunday. Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. Law enforcement spotted their target in the distance: Black protesters. But here, this was no childhood game. The protesters marched fully aware their safety hung in the balance. Police wielded heavy nightsticks and released canisters of tear gas to halt a march for the fundamental right to vote. The blood on that bridge soon forged the Voting Rights Act—and much more.
As the years blend, so do our stories. My father’s Nigerian one blends through immigration into America’s larger narrative. Into this nation’s Black struggle for equality. For the same civil rights struggle that forged the Voting Rights Act also forged the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. It forged my father’s pathway to this nation—his escape from the ravages of a civil war with over a million dead, including his younger brother Cornelius. And so the blood on that bridge in Selma, Alabama, forged my own story as an American.
* * *
The year was 1995.
I was 10 years old. Born and raised in Chicago, I felt the duality of my first-generation American upbringing—not front of mind but inescapable—like a song faintly playing in another room, always there when I listened for it. This song held themes of equality, of lacking my voice, and of finding it—and the melody cascaded throughout my childhood and adulthood.
One day, the bully approached my classmate. Taunts started—about his glasses, his quietness, and his persistent ear condition. As the taunts toward the victim grew, I grew more uncomfortable. And the verbal soon escalated to the physical. The bullying student grabbed the victim and began pushing him while the classroom watched—some more distraught, others more amused, and no one intervening.
A passive bystander, I remained silent. But silence often supports those who oppress. And though I was ostensibly protected, my silence—as Audre Lorde would later teach me—did not protect me. In important ways, this experience induced lingering guilt as I recognized I knew better—even at that young age—but did nothing. Instead, I remained hidden among the much larger mass of students, afraid that speaking up might paint a target on my own back.
* * *
The year was 2002.
I was 16 years old. It was April, and my U.S. History class began its lesson on the Civil Rights Movement. As chance—or providence—would have it, my kind and committed teacher Mr. Dziedzic assigned me to research Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
This assignment changed my life, sparking my love for both public speaking and the courage of civil rights leaders. The former led me to start practicing projecting my voice (when no one was around), seeking to break free from how I had grown up holding it back. The latter refined my convictions on when, where, and how I should use the voice I was finding.
But using your voice can be dangerous, costing life or limb. I remember learning about Bloody Sunday. I remember learning about the lynchings and attacks on civil rights activists in the South. I remember learning about Letter from Birmingham Jail, the courage to speak up despite the risk, and the price of justice. And I remember encountering the line King made famous: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
What stayed with me was the complicity of silence. And the charge to do my part to combat it.
* * *
The year is 2026.
Today, as a law professor, I use my voice to teach the Fourteenth Amendment to the next generation of attorneys. I use my voice through my research, originating the concept of social network discrimination and engaging with the legacy of civil rights and the struggle for equality. I found my voice by studying those who courageously used theirs, and I use it to uncover how we as a society continue to fall short of justice—and what we can do about it.
On July 4, I will be at Monticello—the home of Thomas Jefferson—to commemorate 250 years since our nation’s founding and to celebrate new Americans during their naturalization ceremony. To celebrate the start of others’ journeys as Americans near the home of the man who penned the start of America’s journey—a place holding both the ideals of freedom and the original sin of enslavement.
The ground beneath me will still be red—the clay of Bukuru, the blood of Selma, and the stripes of a flag with white and blue.
Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, declaring that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” Abraham Lincoln invoked those words as he sought to heal our nation from the most destructive war in its history. Martin Luther King invoked those words as he sought to heal our nation from that war’s unfinished business. Yet sixty-one years after Bloody Sunday, the Voting Rights Act protections forged on that bridge in Selma are being dramatically narrowed. So is the promise of the Immigration and Nationality Act, forged in the same year, from the same struggle. And too many of us, simply watching, remain silent against the onslaught—passive bystanders once again.
The legacy of the Civil Rights Movement extends not just to the descendants of enslaved people, but to the broader immigrant community. And this legacy is grounded in that self-evident truth that “all men are created equal.” Black Americans are created equal to white Americans. New Americans are created equal to Americans whose families have been here for generations. And, perhaps radically, sojourners and migrants are created equal to citizens.
So much remains self-evident. Self-evident is the higher purpose of America—the first modern democratic experiment and an example for the world that the divine right of absolute rulers could give way to a more egalitarian and just society. Self-evident is the power of America—that the legacy of the fight for freedom that has marked our nation’s history from abolition to suffrage to civil rights has emboldened generations of Americans to strive for more. Self-evident is the soul of America—that underneath the devastation of our times lies a more perfect Union, one born from our better angels and one which can guide us for the next 50, 100, or even 250 years. But the arc of the moral universe does not bend on its own.
We bend it.
Chika Okafor is an economist and assistant professor of law at Northwestern University—where he teaches constitutional law and researches inequality—and the founder of Todaydream, a youth development organization.