The Museum of the American Revolution presents The Declaration’s Journey

Objects, documents, and works of art, in addition to audio, video, and tactile elements make for vivid storytelling. Near the exhibition’s entrance, the Windsor chair where Thomas Jefferson is believed to have sat while writing the Declaration, and the steel bench Martin Luther King Jr. used while writing his 1963 “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” are side by side. In the latter, King, arrested for leading a peaceful demonstration against racial segregation, defended his strategy of nonviolent direct action after white clergymen issued a public statement criticizing him.

The pairing of the chair and the bench suggests the intertwining of the nation’s founding and the fight for Black rights, a theme echoed in other displays. A portrait and text introduce Mum Bett, aka Elizabeth Freeman. Born to enslaved African parents in Claverack, New York, around 1744, Mum Bett was later sold or given to a family in Massachusetts. In 1781, she sued for her freedom and won, arguing that slavery violated the Massachusetts state constitution.

From Lincoln to Stanton to Stonewall

Another display features a scrapbook of newspaper clippings and notes kept by Abraham Lincoln to prepare for his 1858 debates with Stephen A. Douglass, Lincoln’s rival for a US Senate seat. The scrapbook has handwritten brackets around a passage in the Declaration of Independence.

The Declaration also guided suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s 1848 “Declaration of Sentiments.” However, Stanton added a then-bombshell phrase to Jefferson’s words, writing “all men and women are created equal.” The exhibition includes the desk where Stanton likely wrote her History of Woman Suffrage.

Another exhibition centers an initial design of artist Gilbert Baker’s rainbow flag, now a symbol of LGBTQIA+ pride. It is displayed beside a piece of the ceiling from the Stonewall Inn where a 1969 riot marked a turning point in the gay rights movement.

Sparking revolution abroad

The thirst for freedom reached other shores. In 1811, a group of American supporters of Chile’s war for independence from Spain bankrolled sending a printing press, American printers, and supplies to what was once the southernmost frontier of Spain’s empire.

Aurora de Chile (“Dawn of Chile”), Chile’s first periodical, was printed on the press in 1812. This pro-independence newspaper reprinted speeches by George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and other leaders of the American Revolution. Chileans achieved independence in 1818.

But the printing press given to Chile also raises questions. Enslaved Black people labored throughout Spanish America, including territory that became Chile, from the 1500s well into the 1800s. Thus the press, which Chileans used in their fight for freedom, was an ironic gift from one slave-holding nation to another. Later, their independence won, both the US and Chile rode roughshod over “all men are created equal,” crushing the Indigenous peoples—including Chile’s Aymara and Mapuche peoples—whose lands they occupied.

Contradiction and promise

The Declaration’s Journey comes at an opportune time. It shows Black Americans’ struggle to end slavery, a critical message as some seek to prettify US history by suppressing references to bondage. Mentions of Mum Bett, Richard Allen, Frederick Douglass, and other freedmen and abolitionists are honest and accurate. This attention to African-heritage organizers of the Underground Railroad and the Civil Rights movement counters the stereotype of Black people unable to strategize and lead.

The exhibition acknowledges that many of the signers of the Declaration also enslaved people, a truth that casts a long shadow. While these enslavers, including Thomas Jefferson, demanded freedom for themselves, they inflicted sexual violence on Black women, my foremothers. A chasm gapes between the Declaration’s words and some signers’ deeds.

Contradictions mount with Elizabeth Cady Stanton. “For all her intellectual courage, when faced with opposition to her own priorities Stanton made comments so racist that they can leave us speechless,” Lori D. Ginzberg writes in her 2025 History Now essay “Elizabeth Cady Stanton: Founding Philosopher of American Women’s Rights.”

It is said that the Declaration represents a starting point, but that starting point is now 250 years old. We can hope that despite its mixed messages, The Declaration’s Journey inspires visitors to take action to help bring the Declaration’s promise of equality to fruition.