Glorious Fourth
Come celebrate July 4th with the citizens of Prairietown!
July 4 - 6, 2024
Join the citizens of Prairietown as they celebrate 60 years of American independence, but also hear how many others have questioned this holiday.
ASL interpreters will be on site for our July 4 events.
11 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. and 2 p.m. – 3 p.m.: Quill and Ink at the Kiln Shed
Activities
Throughout the week, there will be opportunities to help decorate the town with festive red, white and blue bunting, as well as help the citizens of Prairietown rehearse speeches and toasts for the holiday celebration! Make sure you stop by The Junction for hands on activities that introduce the power of voice, justice and personal identity.
Daily Operations as normal with a patriotic twist. Tickets for Glorious Fourth are free with general admission! Activities and times repeat each day during Glorious Fourth.
- Glorious Fourth Grove Celebration in Prairietown at 2 p.m.: Join us for a traditional celebratory July Fourth event. Ceremony honoring veterans, presentation of new 25-star flag, reading of the Declaration of Independence and singing.
- Dissenting Voices in the Junction at 12 p.m. and 3 p.m.: List to two speeches, one by Ethel Mackenzie and Teddy Roosevelt. These speeches will provide historical dissenting views on the Fourth of July to showcase citizenship and immigration. Read the full speeches.
- Traditional Lenape music and dancing in 1816 Lenape Indian Camp at 11 a.m. and 4 p.m.: Join Mike Pace as he leads everyone in traditional Lenape music and dancing and a celebration of Lenape culture and history.
- Enjoy a reenactment from the historic White River Guard Militia in Prairietown (July 4 and 6 only). *Please be advised that this program contains gunfire blasts at the end of the show and may not be suitable for all guests.
Read The Full Speeches from Dissenting Voices:
Right up to the highest court in the land went my appeal, Mrs. Ethel Coope Makenzie, wife of Mackenzie Gordon, sweet singer of ballads, that I be permitted my inalienable rights of citizenship as bestowed upon me by the male electors of California. The United States Supreme Court is to be asked which is more important -- that I was born in Woodside, San Mateo County, or that I am married to a man who first saw the light at Inverness, Scotland. The wedding was celebrated just after women had won suffrage in California. When I, as the bride of an Englishman, presented myself at the registration bureau to register as a voter, I was denied the right because it was declared that I was no longer a citizen of the United States, although I had been one until I became Mackenzie’s wife.
If they give us equal rights really, it should mean that my husband by marrying me became an American citizen. If a foreign woman marries an American man, she can vote at once. Why should not the same apply to a foreign man?
The California supreme court decided against me when I brought suit, to compel the Registrar to register me as an American citizen and denied me the right to register as a voter and therefore my right to suffrage.
Why should a woman be expatriated when the sex is merely reversed? I was told it was a federal law. Then the law is illegal and I'll prove it. I’ll appeal to the courts. It is a principle of equal rights. Every woman will stand behind me in this. It is an outrage, this view of the law, and I'll fight it to a finish.
There are 4,000,000 women in the equal suffrage states, and many of these are doubtless in the same predicament as myself. I think it is a matter which should be sifted thoroughly and settled. It is just another fight for suffrage that I am making alone. Although my husband has expressed his willingness to forswear his allegiance to King George at any time for my sake, he has never become an American citizen, because he never expected to remain in any one place. He took out his first citizenship papers when he was living in Arizona, but never followed it up. When the questions regarding my right to vote arose he told me that to make me a citizen and give me a vote, he would take out his citizenship papers again. But I said no. I want my vote on my own rights. So, in our household there is just
one American citizen, Mackenzie Gordon Jr., 5 months old son, whose ballot is worrying him not at all.
My mother would have the same standing I have, were it not for the fact that my father is dead. She is an American and he was an Englishman. Because she is a widow she votes, while I, because my Scottish husband is alive, can have no voice in my country's affairs. They will not let me be naturalized, either. I don't want to get the ballot through my husband's naturalization. He will do it for me, but many foreign husbands would not for their wives.
It is the fight of this California suffragist to smash the law which deprives an American woman of the right to vote when she marries a foreigner, a fight which was carried to the United States Supreme Court. Thousands of California women who have married British subjects, or subjects of other foreign nations, will be affected by the outcome of the case. On this decision depends the question of whether they will be permitted to become voting citizens, in spite of their foreign husbands. According to attorneys in the case the decision will be as far reaching and as historic as the famous Dred Scott case. That marriage in itself is not an act of expatriation and that the federal Expatriation Act of 1907 is unconstitutional are the assertions made in the briefs which we filed. I thought it is a matter which should be settled by an act of congress, if it cannot be arranged any other way.
I was cheered by practically every suffragist of California, who all agreed that they would await the outcome of my court fight, regarding it as a test case, before taking up a fight on their own accounts. I began my fight in the superior courts of California and in 1913 I was defeated in that tribunal. Undaunted and still determined to secure citizenship rights, I carried my case to the Supreme Court. It is not only my fight, but the fight of every equal rights woman in the state.
I built my case on the following principle: only voluntary expatriation, as the woman defines it, can devest her of her citizenship. Yet in 1915, the ruling of my case, Mackenzie v. Hare sided with the opposition, the defense, stating:
“The identity of husband and wife is an ancient principle of our jurisprudence. It was [in Mrs. Mackenzie’s case] neither accidental nor arbitrary, and worked in many instances for her protection. There has been, it is true, much relaxation of it, but in its retention, as in its origin, it is
determined by their intimate relation and unity of interests, and this relation and unity may make it of public concern in many instances to merge their identity, and give dominance to the husband. It has purpose if not necessity in purely domestic policy; it has greater purpose, and, it may be, necessity, in international policy.
We concur with Mrs. Mackenzie that citizenship is of tangible worth, and we sympathize with the plaintiff in her desire to retain it and in her earnest assertion of it. But there is involved more than personal considerations. The marriage of an American woman with a foreigner has consequences of like kind, may involve national complications of like kind, as her physical expatriation may involve. Therefore, as long as the relation lasts, it is made tantamount to expatriation. This is no arbitrary exercise of government. It is one which, regarding the international aspects, judicial opinion has taken for granted would not only be valid, but demanded. It is the conception of the legislation under review that such an act may bring the government into embarrassments, and, it may be, into controversies. It is as voluntary and distinctive as expatriation, and its consequence must be considered as elected.”
In the spring of 1916, my husband applied for U.S. citizenship. When his application was accepted, my citizenship and associated rights were automatically restored.
However, it wasn’t until 1922, 2 years after the ratification of the 19th amendment, which granted women in America the right vote, that the Cable Act was passed. This ensured that a woman citizen of the United States should not cease to be a citizen of the United States by reason of her marriage, unless she makes a formal renunciation of her citizenship before a court having jurisdiction over naturalization of aliens.
In the end, I am glad that an injustice to women has at last been recognized. By gradual unfoldment women are winning equal rights with men. My fight was not brought for personal motives. It was a matter of principle with me. I feel that my fight was not in vain.
“It may be the highest duty of a judge at any given moment to disregard, not merely the wishes of individuals of great political or financial power, but the overwhelming tide of public sentiment; and the judge who does thus disregard public sentiment when it is wrong, who brushes aside the plea of any special interest when the pleading is not rounded on righteousness, performs the highest service to the country. Such a judge is deserving of all honor; and all honor cannot be paid to this wise and fearless judge if we permit the growth of an absurd convention which would forbid any criticism of the judge of another type, who shows himself timid in the presence of arrogant disorder, or who on insufficient grounds grants an injunction that does grave injustice, or who in his capacity as a construer, and therefore in part a maker, of the law, in flagrant fashion thwarts the cause of decent government.
The best judges have ever been foremost to disclaim any immunity from criticism. This has been true since the days of the great English Lord Chancellor Parker, who said: ‘Let all people be at liberty to know what I found my judgment upon; that, so when I have given it in any cause, others may be at liberty to judge of me.’ This was set forth with singular clearness and good temper by Judge W. H. Taft, when a United States circuit judge, eleven years ago, in 1895:
‘The opportunity freely and publicly to criticize judicial action is of vastly more importance to the body politic than the immunity of courts and judges from unjust aspersions and attack. Nothing tends more to render judges careful in their decisions and anxiously solicitous to do exact justice than the consciousness that every act of theirs is to be subjected to the intelligent scrutiny and candid criticism of their fellowmen.
Courts must ultimately rest their defense upon the inherent strength of the opinions they deliver as the ground for their conclusions and must trust to the calm and deliberate judgment of all the people as their best vindication.’
There is one consideration which should be taken into account by the good people who carry a sound proposition to an excess in objecting to any criticism of a judge's decision. The instinct of the American people as a whole is sound in this
matter. They will not subscribe to the doctrine that any public servant is to be above all criticism.
The man who debauches others in order to obtain a high office stands on an evil equality of corruption with the man who debauches others for financial profit; and when hatred is sown the crop which springs up can only be evil.
The plain people who think--the mechanics, farmers, merchants, workers with head or hand, the men to whom American traditions are dear, who love their country and try to act decently by their neighbors, owe it to themselves to remember that the most damaging blow that can be given popular government is to elect an unworthy and sinister agitator on a platform of violence and hypocrisy. Whenever such an issue is raised in this country nothing can be gained by flinching from it, for in such case democracy is itself on trial, popular self-government under republican forms is itself on trial. The triumph of the mob is just as evil a thing as the triumph of the plutocracy, and to have escaped one danger avails nothing whatever if we succumb to the other. In the end the honest man, whether rich or poor, who earns his own living and tries to deal justly by his fellows, has as much to fear from the insincere and unworthy demagog, promising much and performing nothing, or else performing nothing but evil, who would set on the mob to plunder the rich, as from the crafty corruptionist, who, for his own ends, would permit the common people to be exploited by the very wealthy. If we ever let this Government fall into the hands of men of either of these two classes, we shall show ourselves false to America's past.
It is a mistake, and it betrays a spirit of foolish cynicism, to maintain that all international governmental action is, and must ever be, based upon mere selfishness, and that to advance ethical reasons for such action is always a sign of hypocrisy. This is no more necessarily true of the action of governments than of the action of individuals. It is a sure sign of a base nature always to ascribe base motives for the actions of others. Unquestionably no nation can afford to disregard proper considerations of self-interest, any more than a private individual can so do. But it is equally true that the average private individual in any really decent community does many actions with reference to other men in which he is guided, not by self-interest, but by public spirit, by regard for the rights of others, by a disinterested purpose to do good to others, and to raise the tone of the community as a whole. Similarly, a really great nation must often act, and as a matter of fact
often does act, toward other nations in a spirit not in the least of mere self-interest, but paying heed chiefly to ethical reasons; and as the centuries go by this disinterestedness in international action, this tendency of the individuals comprising a nation to require that nation to act with justice toward its neighbors, steadily grows and strengthens. It is neither wise nor right for a nation to disregard its own needs, and it is foolish--and may be wicked--to think that other nations will disregard theirs. But it is wicked for a nation only to regard its own interest, and foolish to believe that such is the sole motive that actuates any other nation. It should be our steady aim to raise the ethical standard of national action just as we strive to raise the ethical standard of individual action.
Not only must we treat all nations fairly, but we must treat with justice and good will all immigrants who come here under the law. Whether they are Catholic or Protestant, Jew or Gentile; whether they come from England or Germany, Russia, Japan, or Italy, matters nothing. All we have a right to question is the man's conduct. If he is honest and upright in his dealings with his neighbor and with the State, then he is entitled to respect and good treatment. Especially do we need to remember our duty to the stranger within our gates. It is the sure mark of a low civilization, a low morality, to abuse or discriminate against or in any way humiliate such stranger who has come here lawfully and who is conducting himself properly. To remember this is incumbent on every American citizen, and it is of course peculiarly incumbent on every Government official, whether of the nation or of the several States.
I am prompted to say this by the attitude of hostility here and there assumed toward the Japanese in this country. This hostility is sporadic and is limited to a very few places. Nevertheless, it is most discreditable to us as a people, and it may be fraught with the gravest consequences to the nation. The friendship between the United States and Japan has been continuous since the time, over half a century ago, when Commodore Perry, by his expedition to Japan, first opened the islands to western civilization. Since then the growth of Japan has been literally astounding. The overwhelming mass of our people cherish a lively regard and respect for the people of Japan, and in almost every quarter of the Union the stranger from Japan is treated as he deserves. But here and there a most unworthy feeling has manifested itself toward the Japanese--the feeling that has been shown in shutting them out from the common schools in San Francisco, and in mutterings against them in one or two other places, because of their efficiency as workers. To
shut them out from the public schools is a wicked absurdity, when there are no first-class colleges in the land, including the universities and colleges of California, which do not gladly welcome Japanese students and on which Japanese students do not reflect credit. We have as much to learn from Japan as Japan has to learn from us; and no nation is fit to teach unless it is also willing to learn. Throughout Japan Americans are well treated, and any failure on the part of Americans at home to treat the Japanese with a like courtesy and consideration is by just so much a confession of inferiority in our civilization.
I recommend to the Congress that an act be passed specifically providing for the naturalization of Japanese who come here intending to become American citizens. One of the great embarrassments attending the performance of our international obligations is the fact that the Statutes of the United States are entirely inadequate. They fail to give to the National Government sufficiently ample power, thru United States courts and by the use of the Army and Navy, to protect aliens in the rights secured to them under solemn treaties which are the law of the land. I therefore earnestly recommend that the criminal and civil statutes of the United States be so amended and added to as to enable the President, acting for the United States Government, which is responsible in our international relations, to enforce the rights of aliens under treaties. Even as the law now is something can be done by the Federal Government toward this end, and in the matter now before me affecting the Japanese everything that it is in my power to do will be done, and all of the forces, military and civil, of the United States which I may lawfully employ will be so employed.
Good manners should be an international no less than an individual attribute. I ask fair treatment for the Japanese as I would ask fair treatment for Germans or Englishmen, Frenchmen, Russians, or Italians. I ask it as due to humanity and civilization. I ask it as due to ourselves because we must act uprightly toward all men.”
Past Dissenting Voices Speeches
Learn more about the reason behind Fredrick Douglass's speech: Summer Celebrations: Freedom For All?