John Adams, American patriot and the nation’s second president, believed Independence Day would be celebrated annually not on the Fourth of July but on the Second. He was off by a couple days but he had a point. It was on July 2, 1776, that Congress declared independence from Great Britain. It’s just that it took a bit longer to adopt the Declaration of Independence, drafted by Thomas Jefferson with edits and contributions from Adams and Benjamin Franklin.
States continued to disenfranchise Black voters with selectively enforced literacy tests, racially discriminatory districting, harassment and intimidation. More marches and violence gave muscle to the successful drive to pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
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