Independence, Documented
To celebrate the upcoming 250th anniversary of the United States, an exhibition at Philadelphia’s Museum of the American Revolution shines a light on the history and ripple effects of the nation’s Declaration of Independence. An array of documents shows how the declaration has influenced rights movements in more than 100 nations around the world, including how declaration documents from Chile, Czechoslovakia, Haiti, Mexico, and South Korea as well as Native American Declarations of Sovereignty and Independence have integrated the declaration’s ideals. The exhibit, “The Declaration’s Journey,” also includes artifacts that touch on the document’s history and importance, such as the chair that Thomas Jefferson is thought to have used in 1776 while writing the declaration; the hard metal bench upon which Martin Luther King Jr. composed “Letter From a Birmingham Jail” in 1963; the desk used by Elizabeth Cady Stanton while she wrote The History of Woman Suffrage; and a copy of the 1852 Frederick Douglass speech, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?”
The exhibit, funded in part by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, will be on display until Jan. 3, 2027.
—Daniel LeDuc
