A Novel Meaning of July 4th
From Macon Bolling Allen to quantum computing
A NOVEL MEANING OF JULY 4th
From Macon Bolling Allen to quantum computing
Editors’ note: This is the third of four essays we are publishing in honor of our nation’s 250th birthday. Enjoy!
As we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence from Great Britain, many readers will read essays about the greatness of America, the enduring genius of Thomas Jefferson and the other Founders, the conflicted feelings some black Americans have toward the national birthday, and the lamentable loss of patriotism since the bicentennial in 1976.
I remember the excitement in the air as July 4, 1976 approached. From my perch in Chester, Virginia, the feeling seemed universal. I grew up surrounded by American history: Henricus, founded in 1611 by Sir Thomas Dale, and Dale’s 1613 land allotments, which some see as an early anticipation of the American Dream; the Half Way House, where George Washington dined and slept; Fort Darling, where Confederate soldiers fought off Union gunboats advancing up the James River toward Richmond; the Defense General Supply Center, where German prisoners of war were detained during World War II; and the desegregation of public schools in the fall of 1969.
Above all these dates, however, loomed the sacred memory of the national birthday in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776. Virginians were there at the beginning, and that knowledge became part of us. A distant cousin, Richard Henry Lee (1732-1794), moved the Resolution for Independence, and another cousin’s ancestor, Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), drafted the words: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.
If one grew up in a small southern town, and if one’s ancestors lived in this country before 1900, one can probably call at least one Founder a cousin, regardless of race. These men of vision were our cousins.
When my friend and fellow Journal of Free Black Thought (JFBT) board member Jake Mackey asked me to write a piece for JFBT about what the Fourth of July meant to me, I fell into writer’s block, which is uncommon for me. I strained to praise the momentousness of July 4, 1776, in Philadelphia. What new was there to say? (See Jon Meacham, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, pp. 100-106 [2012]).
Then it occurred to me that I needed to change my perception of July 4. The real and lasting meaning for me, as an American native to Virginia, was not simply the adoption of the Declaration on one Philadelphia day.
It was an American way of being in the world. It was faith in the coming of a better time as my American inheritance. Every pioneer black lawyer before 1879 lived in this faith. When black lawyer George B. Vashon (1824-1878) laid claim to his American legacy before President Abraham Lincoln in September 1862, Vashon wrote words deeply rooted in his American identity:
It is difficult to make a man miserable while he feels he is worthy of himself, and claims kindred to the great God who made him.
Thus, he continued, black Americans had schooled themselves “to labor and wait,” in the hope of the coming of a better time.
For me, being an American has meant an enduring faith in the coming of a better time. That creed is rooted in the Declaration of Independence, adopted on July 4, 1776, and later engrossed on parchment and signed by 56 men beginning on August 2. Had the Revolution failed, the signers could have been convicted of treason against the Crown and hanged as traitors. From its conception, the American faith was hope in the coming of a better time. That faith separates my American inheritance from traditions formed by Great Britain, the Soviet Union, Communist China, dystopian North Korea, and the endless tribal wars of Somalia.
I think back to the eve of July 4, 1844. It was July 3, and a powerful message about the coming of a better time was about to be communicated in Portland, Maine. From Jamestown’s founding in 1607 until 1844, there had never been a black lawyer in colonial America or in the United States. In the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, being a lawyer signaled aristocratic bearing and learned expertise. Lawyers were perceived as part of the elite. It is fair to say that lawyers carried themselves as upper-class, or near upper-class. Prestige flowed from admission to the bar.
To use a modern term, becoming a lawyer was a severe glass ceiling for more than two centuries. Imagine what it meant for a black American to aspire to join the learned gentry. Pioneer black lawyers cracked an otherwise impenetrable racial caste system, to borrow a phrase from Brando Simeo Starkey. Why would any black man aspire to become a pioneer black lawyer in 1844? There was no market demand for a black lawyer. There were no black forerunners in the law to offer guidance or counsel. Even many black Americans thought it a questionable aim. It was far easier, and far more plausible, to become a minister, a teacher, or a carpenter.
Macon Bolling Allen, born free in Indiana and traditionally dated to August 4, 1816, developed a call to become a lawyer. There was no support for his dream in his home state. But he became aware of abolitionists in Maine who supported the dignity of black people. One lawyer treated Allen with such empathy and color-blindness that neighbors remarked he had a “black heart.” That far-sighted, visionary, abolitionist white lawyer was General Samuel Fessenden. When Fessenden learned that Allen wanted to become a lawyer, he did the decent thing: he made his law office and study available to Allen.
Those who have read my Gotterdammerung novel may recall the thousand and one obstacles an aspiring pioneer black lawyer faced in the 1840s. The climate in Maine, and the heart of Fessenden, offered a small door through which Allen achieved the unimaginable. Despite discrimination from the bar examiners, Allen and Fessenden persevered. On July 3, 1844, when Allen passed the Maine bar examination and became the first licensed black lawyer in the United States, the words We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal gained renewed meaning in Portland. Allen was so poor that he had to borrow money for his bar fees from Fessenden.
But no matter. For the roughly 386,000 free black Americans and nearly 2.5 million enslaved black Americans enumerated in the 1840 census, Allen’s admission to the bar on the eve of July 4 signaled the power of faith in the coming of a better time. There lies meaning for my American soul.
The coming of a better time for black Americans on America’s 250the anniversary is no longer the dream of a poor, driven black man from Indiana being admitted to the Maine bar. We are living, this July 4, on the cusp of extraordinary technological advances. A better future lies within our grasp. We no longer need to worry about pioneer black lawyers. Those were the concerns of our grandparents’ grandparents.
On America 250th anniversary, we should be thankful for the coming wave of prosperity, affluence, meaning, purpose, and human dignity. It is about the coming of a better time for all Americans, including Americans who happen to be black Americans. We should read more about the next revolutions in the human condition.
One revolution already around us is artificial intelligence (AI).
Frontier AI labs are creating stupendous economic opportunity in Silicon Valley and the Bay Area. Fresh wealth blankets the green hills of greater San Francisco. Private-company valuations make precise net-worth estimates unstable, but the scale is unmistakable: Sam Altman is worth billions, largely through investments outside OpenAI; Anthropic founder Dario Amodei is also estimated to be worth billions; and OpenAI president Greg Brockman’s stake in OpenAI has been reported, through court testimony, at nearly $30 billion. OpenAI alone has allowed more than 600 current and former employees to sell billions of dollars in stock, with dozens reportedly selling the maximum allotment of $30 million each. The larger point is clear: AI has created one of the most lucrative markets in the history of computing. Top researchers can command extraordinary compensation packages, including salaries, bonuses, and equity. Yet no black-founded company is currently recognized among the frontier-model labs on the scale of OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, xAI, or Meta AI. That tells me that some have lost the plot.
The founder and publisher of Black Enterprise magazine once said, “Excelling in business goes hand in hand with excelling at creating opportunities for others. Any entrepreneur can make money. The very best make a difference.” Earl G. Graves (1935-2020) was on to something. One of the best ways to make a difference in America is to excel at business and create opportunities for others. Love them or hate them, the titans of AI in Silicon Valley are changing lives. Generational wealth is being generated right now.
We are on the cusp of the coming of a better time for many. Black Americans should be there. Nothing stops ambitious and brilliant black minds today from channeling Earl Graves. The better time is upon us for those who are prepared, confident, driven, disciplined, and far-sighted. This is the meaning of the Declaration of Independence for me today: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Being a black American has always been about the coming of a better time. Build a frontier AI lab if you have the talent, drive, and skill set. Create from nothing everything. That is the mindset that led law-firm partner Reginald Lewis, after hours and on weekends, to read Forbes and Fortune in search of companies for sale at a discount. Lewis had the insight to see the coming of a better time: he could be more than a law-firm partner. In 1984, he purchased McCall’s Patterns for $22.5 million, using $1 million of his own money as a down payment. Three years later, he sold McCall’s Patterns for roughly $69 million. Deep internal conviction, extreme work ethic, discipline, focus, hyper-confidence, and fearlessness combined to bring about the coming of a better time in Lewis’s life.
Some people are already trying to build in the AI space, even if none has yet reached frontier-lab scale. There are black founders of AI companies, AI research ventures, and AI-driven startups, including Erika Hairston, Arnelle Ansong, Wasim Khaled, Dawn Dickson, Sara Menker, David Steward, Joseph Rutakangwa, Candace Mitchell, and others. I trust they are all aimed at the coming of a better time.
We are on the cusp of economic abundance in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Why are some missing in action?
“But right now, there are perhaps a few hundred people, most of them in San Francisco and the AI labs, that have situational awareness . . . Let me tell you what we see.” —John Herrman, “How AGI Made the Future Unthinkable,” Intelligencer.
Incredible as the opportunities in frontier AI labs are, they may pale beside the nascent world of quantum computing and quantum-enhanced AI. There was a time when quantum computing seemed like science fiction, something more akin to Star Trek than to the real world. I am not an expert in quantum mechanics. I have, at best, a toddler’s sense of how qubits operate and dance their dance at the quantum level. But I have a nose for trends. Quantum-computing trends are moving in one direction. The trend is your friend until the end. That is true in financial markets. It is true in human psychology. It may also be true in quantum computing.
Quantum computers are not magic versions of classical computers, and they will not be faster at every task. For certain classes of problems, however, they can achieve extraordinary speedups. Simon’s problem, for example, is a benchmark in quantum-computing theory because it shows an exponential query advantage for an ideal quantum computer over a classical one. That does not mean every business problem will be solved in milliseconds. It does mean that quantum computation can open a radically different computational regime.
Researchers and scientists increasingly recognize that cancer is, in part, a computational problem: a problem of modeling proteins, genomes, tumor evolution, drug candidates, and treatment response. Quantum computing, especially when combined with AI, may eventually help model molecular and biological systems that are difficult for classical machines. For the man on the street, the hope is better healthcare, faster drug development, earlier disease detection, and more personalized medicine.
Why should black Americans care about the coming abundance of quantum-enhanced AI? Because cancer is killing our mothers, uncles, cousins, and friends. Black American men have the highest prostate-cancer burden in the United States and are about twice as likely to die from prostate cancer as white men. Black women have a substantially higher risk of dying from breast cancer than white women. Black Americans are about twice as likely to die from multiple myeloma as white Americans; my cousin Bruce died on June 3, 2016, at the age of 65 from this cancer. Black Americans also face markedly higher mortality from stomach cancer and colorectal cancer. The causes include late-stage diagnosis, unequal access to care, differences in treatment, and, in some cancers, aggressive tumor biology. That complexity cries out for earlier detection, better access, and more individualized genomic healthcare.
Quantum-enhanced AI could help usher in the coming of a better time for innumerable black American families. If you are reading this essay, promise me you will support quantum computing and quantum-enhanced medicine in every responsible way you can.
I think back to the market conditions Macon Bolling Allen faced on July 3, 1844. There was no market demand for a pioneer black lawyer. Today there is red-hot demand for frontier AI talent. Too few black entrepreneurs are fearlessly grabbing the reins of frontier AI opportunity.
Another welcome revolution may await us on the horizon: the reversal, or at least the slowing, of aging. Once again, such a development would be another blessing of the coming of a better time for black Americans. As it stands now, life expectancy for black Americans is roughly 74 years; for white Americans, it is roughly 78 years.
If one credits AI forecaster Daniel Kokotajlo and the AI 2027 scenario, the world could experience dramatic biomedical breakthroughs, perhaps even interventions that reverse aspects of aging, in the 2030 or 2031 timeframe. Kokotajlo’s bullish forecast assumes artificial superintelligence (ASI) in 2027. It is not clear to me that we will see ASI next year. I want to be clear that Kokotajlo is at one end of the forecasting spectrum. His projected timeline for reversal of aging is the most tenuous assertion in this forward-looking essay. Nonetheless, for me, the reversal or slowing of aging would mean the coming of a better time.
If we lift our eyes to the night sky and look upon the glowing moon, we are peering into the coming of a better time for discovery and exploration. There are no more untouched frontiers here on planet Earth, but we can look toward the heavens and see a new destiny. I remember looking up at the moon on July 20, 1969. It was dark outside, a perfect dark sky illuminated by a glowing moon. My parents allowed me to stay up late to watch Neil Armstrong set foot on the dusty lunar soil. I ran outside into the night, stared at the moon, and imagined I could see Armstrong at that very moment.
For my generation, it was a defining moment.
Now we are living in the time of a new lunar frontier. NASA’s Artemis architecture envisions a sustained human presence on and around the moon, with surface missions, landers, rovers, and lunar infrastructure developing over the next several years. Elon Musk and SpaceX continue to speak in more ambitious terms about human settlement beyond Earth. The precise timeline for short-term habitation, water extraction, a permanent lunar base, mining, and a lunar city is uncertain and will depend on engineering, politics, budgets, and risk. Still, all the neural pathways impressed by the Apollo moonshots are brought to life again. To be alive when a new frontier opens to the American pioneer is amazing.
These are better times to be an American. It is a great time to be alive.
A steadfast belief in the coming of a better time aligns well with a Golden Age in Creativity. It is a mindset that the future can be better than the past. The convergence of AI, quantum computing, quantum-enhanced medicine, possible longevity breakthroughs, and the moon as a new frontier could create a powerful synergy in the human spirit of the possible. More people will leave the nine-to-five and write poetry. More young executives will flee the rat race and fulfill their destiny as nannies and mothers. More weary lawyers will write essays and novels after hours and on weekends. As machine intelligence increases around us, there will be a renewed emphasis on our common humanity. We will prize the human touch, not AI slop.
The mindset of a Golden Age in Creativity will echo the generation of the Founders. Creativity and creative expression will increase. Dogma and slogan words will lose their hold over the human soul, much as monarchy lost its grip over the minds and hearts of Virginia planters in the 1770s. The like-minded who value human dignity, creative expression, and the individual will come together in groups like FBT and challenge one another, value one another, and better one another. An explosion of innovative ideas and new ways of thinking will be inevitable.
There is no surer way to the coming of a better time than joy in intellectual banter. It is not the echo chamber but tolerance for novelty that will help create a Golden Age in Creativity for a Golden Time of increasingly powerful technology. Machines can free us to be more human, as Dario Amodei has written.
Conclusion
It is not about peering down on Independence Hall in Philadelphia with a microscope for the imperfections of mortal men. Nor is it about judging Thomas Jefferson only by our times and morality. Jefferson set into motion a mindset, through words, that helped make the end of American slavery conceivable; formal abolition came with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment on December 6, 1865. It is about our inheritance, our way of being in the world as Americans, and the blessing of July 4. It is about the coming of a better time, remembering how the admission of Macon Bolling Allen to the bar signaled the best in the American spirit. The coming of a better time is our blessed future, anticipating the incredible blessings of technology that may bear fruit for all Americans, regardless of race, in unimaginable ways.
My daughter once said, connect the dots. For me, the greatest meaning of our 250th anniversary is connecting the thread between Macon Bolling Allen and quantum computing, and seeing in that connection the relentless coming of a better time in my American soul.
W. F. Twyman, Jr., a former law professor and current board member of Free Black Thought, was born in Richmond, Virginia. He came of age in the New South in the 1970s. A graduate of the University of Virginia and Harvard Law School, Twyman is the author of the newly acclaimed book, Letters in Black and White: A New Correspondence on Race in America (co-author Jennifer Richmond). His essay in the Pennsylvania Lawyer Magazine inspired the posthumous admission, in 2010, of the first black lawyer in New York state, George Boyer Vashon, to the Pennsylvania State Bar, which had denied him twice, in 1847 and in 1868. Wink contributes to Free Black Thought regularly, both in podcast and written form. A list of his contributions can be found here. He writes for Substack here.
"For me, being an American has meant an enduring faith in the coming of a better time."
True enough. But right now is pretty damned good.
Brilliant essay!