“We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.” As look at the history of American democracy, we begin with the nation’s founding contradiction: the dispossession of Natives, the enslavement of Africans and the exclusion of women in a new nation dedicated to the radical concept of universal human equality. Through a reading of the founding documents of the United States, ranging from the Declaration of Independence to the speeches of Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass and Barack Obama, we consider how race, colonialism and slavery shaped the nation's founding, and how this legacy, this “original sin” of the American founding, continues to shape and distort our democracy. Series: "Public Policy and Society" [Public Affairs] [Humanities] [Show ID: 36276]