International Journal of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences Studies

Volume 7 Issue 9 ǁ September 2022

ISSN: 2582-1601
www.ijahss.com

The Black Force in the Construction of the American

Dream
Martin Pariss VOUNOU
Enseignant chercheur, Maitre-Assistant à L’École Normale Supérieure (Université Marien Ngouabi)
E-mail : [email protected]

Abstract : Historically, the American dream began in 1492 with the discovery of American by Europeans. They
called it the New World. The term New World therefore opened up new perspectives for life. It was in this
context that he had significant human migrations from Europe to American where thousands of men and women
hoped to find a better life. Other migrations came from Africa, of course, these were tragic, the Atlantic slave
trade. Step by step, the American dream, as we understand it today, became an « American » singularity. This
communication is devoted to this American dream; this American which the black force (economic, moral and
intellectual) helped to build from the second half of the 17th century until the second half of the 20th century.
The objective of the communication is to show that one should not set aside, for knowledge of the building of the
American dream, the important aspects which constitute its foundation. How did black people contributed to
build the American dream? Critical analysis of large historical facts is the methodology chosen in this study:
the work of blacks in fields and mines; by way of their participation in the war of independence of the United
States, and in that of the so-called Secession; to their remarkable contribution to the equality of civil rights
which gave the American dream a human face.

Keywords: Black force, American dream, construction, foundation.

I. Introduction
The world, as we see it today, is the result of a long and painful construction whose foundations lie
behind us. The men and women of the past have given their intelligence, imagination and physical energy to put
in place the essential contours on which the men of the present embroidered the threads that continue to shape
the world. The economic world, the cultural world, the social world, the political world, the scientific and
technological world. This construction would not have been possible without the meeting of men and women
from all over the world. Men always walk in search of happiness that seems elusive to them. At the end of these
steps they met, meet in the course of history. Some of these encounters caused tragedies, such as the Atlantic
slave trade, which gave rise to the enslavement of black captives in America. These men and women thus
deprived of their liberty had been able to retain a mental, intellectual and physical strength that allowed them to
reinvent themselves in order to believe in life and perpetuate it. Very often the contribution of black deportees to
the construction of America is summed up only in the fields of cotton, tea and music (jazz, rumba). History
shows that they were more than that. The most striking example is their active participation in the construction
of America in the United States with their "fascinating" dream referred to as the "American dream." This
expression would be used for the first time in 1931 by James Truslow Adams in his book The Epic of America
(G.-F., Dumont, 2011, p. 623). It means access to fundamental freedoms and social rise through merit. However,
the origins of the American dream are deeper at the time of the publication of James Truslow Adams. Because
this dream as we conceive it is a long and laborious construction. The American dream has a history. There
could not be an American dream without fundamental freedoms and merit, two conditions that open up social
ascension; it is also in this area that one can notice the work of blacks (called black force). They set their
intelligence to the establishment of this pillar of the American dream: fundamental freedoms. One can go back
to the question of fundamental freedoms that shaped the American dream in the 1680s when the first Quaker
settlers began to denounce slavery in the territory of Pennsylvania (United States) with the "Germantown
Protest" issued in 1688. One of the Quakers' motivations for their movement is the ideal that "There is
something of God in every person." Since then, the American dream in its fundamental liberties has gone
through several stages of construction, the leading figures of which were black Americans, until 1968 with the
Civil Rights Act, which legally ended all forms of racial segregation throughout the United States. How in three
centuries (seventeenth-twentieth century) did blacks from Africa build the American dream? To answer this

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question, the article questions and analyses the historical facts in which blacks took an active part in building the
United States of America: the work of the fields, participation in the abolition of slavery, the war of
independence of the United States and the war of secession and finally the struggle for equality of fundamental
freedoms. The objective of this study is to show that, contrary to the superficial thesis that sees black man as
merely an unjust victim of history, blacks were really actors at the heart of the great questions that built the
American dream. It adopts a methodology based on the use of bibliographic documents. The communication is
structured in three points, first of all the black force at the foundation of the American economy pillar of the
American dream; the second point will address the struggle of blacks for freedom and their part in the two main
wars for the formation of the American nation (another pillar of the American dream); the third item will deal
with the struggle for equal civil rights, the third pillar of the American dream.

1. The Black Force at the Foundation of the American Economy Pillar of the American Dream
We cannot separate the history of the United States from the black settlement of America, just as we
cannot separate the foundations of the American economy from the work of the blacks in the immense tea fields,
of maize, cotton, sugar cane, tobacco etc. A certain Afrocentrist opinion only looks at this story on the whip of
the white man lacerating the curved back of the black man deprived of liberty, treated as a mere beast of sum;
while forgetting the crucial role of blacks in the American economy. While not advocating crime from both
continents (Africa-Europe), talking about the contribution of black work in America under construction in the
context of the seventeenth-twentieth century is in the logic of historical research to understand the American
dream in its heyday and misfortune. The first blacks were landed on the soil of the future United States in 1619.
At that time, the United States was in training, so the economy was a crucial issue. We know that the instrument
of building this economy was the black force. That is why it is not a big word to say that "America became
America thanks to the sweat of blacks" (Batsikama, 1971, p. 35). The American economy, whose foundations
are agriculture, is a pillar of the American dream; therefore, it is quite logical, after analysis, to assert that the
black force was the spearhead. When the Blacks arrived, the White Settlers were quick to transform a nature to
adapt it to human life. It is man's own when he is facing nature, for his survival, his intelligence and his
imagination move him to act on it; because:
Dans la dimension matérielle de l’existence, le savoir de l’élite intellectuelle devient assez vite, le levier du
développement humain. Ce savoir d’une emprise toujours plus sûre de l’homme sur la nature, et,
corrélativement, le desserrement progressif de l’emprise de la nature sur l’homme (D. Ngoïe-Ngalla, 2020, p.
10).
La force pour réaliser ce grand projet était noire.
The southern United States was a country of very large estates, large tropical plantations using an abundant
black force. Some estimates show that in 1763, 281,000 black slaves were quarried in the fields out of a total
population of 735,000 in the southern United States. They worked on plantations with an estimated area of
70,000 hectares. In the north less populated than in the south, in the same year, there were 495,000 inhabitants,
including 17,000 slaves. In the centre, around New York, there were 410,000 inhabitants this year, including
29,000 slaves. The total population of the United States was 1,271,000, of whom 327,000 were black and
944,000 white. The Indian population was not included in these figures.
Since the nation's growing economy was based on agriculture, the thousands of blacks contributed very
significantly. It was thanks to this tremendous agricultural success that the 13 British colonies in America, the
future United States, became economically strong, capable of competing with the economically advanced
countries of Europe at that time (Britain in the lead). Even though they worked under the slave regime, blacks
were aware of the result of their work: producing wealth. Thus, the history of the economic rise of the United
States is the history of black labor in huge plantations; the story of their sweating sorrows to give a real
economic framework to the American dream.

II. Black Struggle for Freedom, Pillar of the American Dream

2.1. Struggle for the Abolition of Slavery
The struggle for the abolition of slavery is a very important step in the construction of the American
dream. The American dream, the idea that any person living in the United States, through his work, courage and
determination, can succeed, echoes the American Declaration of Independence of 1776, which proclaimed the
pursuit of happiness, freedom and equality as inalienable rights. However, these ideas could not make sense if
on American soil a part of its population would have to crumble under the weight of slavery. It is in this too that
one can notice the Black activist for the abolition of this weight.
Certainly, blacks did not appreciate their status as slaves. This explains many of the fugitives among
them; but most often their action was unsuccessful. There were also people among the white population who
took a negative view of slavery and pushed for its abolition. Thus animated by the idea that "there is something
of God in every person," the Quakers were:

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The first to campaign in an organized manner against slavery and to question the right of one person to
own another as a slave. The first American anti-slavery society, the Pennsylvania Abolition Society in
Philadelphia on April 14, 1775 (J. Hope Franklin and Alfred A. Moss, 2000, p. 80), was inspired by
Antoine Bénézet and John Woolman.
Long before this society was founded, Antoine Bénézet and John Woolman had already taken up the cause of
slavery in the 1740s and 1750s. They participated in convincing the opinion of the Quaker community to
commit themselves against this practice. Consequently, in 1758 the Quakers made any involvement in the slave
trade a wrongful act.
The actions of the Quakers reinforced among blacks the idea of their freedom that they had to seek. Where
possible, they engaged with the Quakers in activities for the emancipation of slaves. They took an active part in
the Underground Railroad. The Underground Railroad was a network to assist runaway slaves in the United
States in the late 18th century, probably after the American Revolution. It was certainly born in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, under the impetus of abolitionists, free blacks, and Quakers, a fairly active Protestant community
against slavery. So many blacks participated in this movement to abolish the slave. Among them are great black
personalities such as Pastor S. Wright, Samuel Cornish, Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman.
Pastor S. Wright was the first Black to enter a theological seminary, Princeton, from which he graduated in
1828. In 1833 he participated in the founding of the American Anti-Slavery Society. As its name suggests, this
society was intended to fight for the end of slavery on United States soil.
Samuel Cornish was born in 1790, and in 1815 moved to Philadelphia and then to New York, where he founded
a congregation of black Presbyterians. Upon his ordination in 1822, his parish of New Demeter Street
Presbyterian Church became the first black Presbyterian church in the United States. In 1827 he founded with
John Russwurn the Freedom "Journal, the first newspaper published by blacks. In 1883 he joined the American
Anti-Slavery Society (Amercan Council of Learned Societies, 1990, pp. 527-528). It was not just men, but
women of character also fought against slavery.
Sojourner Truth, when she was born in New York State, her name is Isabella Beaumfree. It was only in 1843
that she took the name Sojourner Truth by which she was famous in her actions against slavery. She was freed
on the eve of the abolition of slavery in her state of birth in 1827. An active evangelist, she participated in the
abolitionist movement. In 1851, she mixed her struggle for the abolition of slavery with that for women's rights.
In the 1860s she joined the National Citizen's Relief, an association dedicated to helping former slaves.
Harriet Tubman, born in 1822 to a deeply religious slave family, decided to escape to avoid being resold
because of an injury she had received. She chose to return to Pennsylvania in 1849. Pennsylvania was the first
state to abolish slavery in the United States under the influence of the Quakers. This justifies Harriet Tubman's
choice to take refuge there with the help of Underground Railroad, the Underground Railroad. Her freedom was
restored and many slaves were helped to escape. Becoming a leading figure of the Underground Railway, his
actions earned him the nicknames of Black Moses, Grandmother Moses, or Moses of the Black people. After the
Civil War and the abolition of slavery in the United States in 1865, she directed her actions in the fight against
racism and the movement for women's right to vote.
What do these personalities represent? The black moral, mental and intellectual force behind the construction of
the American dream. As a reminder, that in its definition the American dream is the ideal according to which
any person living in the United States, by his work, his courage and his determination, can succeed. All this
ideal would be zero with slavery; for one cannot succeed in one's happiness without freedom. So, in fighting for
freedom, the blacks of the United States put in the architecture of the American dream one of the pillars of its
foundations.

2.2. The American War of Independence (1775-1783)

Feeling economically strong, the 13 British colonies in America found the British crown cumbersome.
They wanted to get out of it to govern themselves. The will and motives for these states to demand their
independence from Britain were expressed in the United States Declaration of Independence passed on July 4,
1776 by the Philadelphia Congress. Here is an excerpt:
When a people sees itself in the need to sever the political ties that unite it with another and to become
independent on an equal footing with other powers, just respect for men forces it to tell the causes of this
separation. We believe in these truths: all men are born equal; they all have rights including life, freedom
and the pursuit of happiness. To guarantee these rights, men establish governments that they choose and
can abolish. But when a long line of abuses shows that this government wants to put in place absolute
despotism, it is their right, their duty to reject such a government. This has been the long patience of
these colonies and today is the necessity that forces them to change their old system of government
(Africa and the World History 4th, 17th-19th century, 1994, p. 117).

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This statement contains the meaning and essence of the American dream. Independence was thought to be a
guarantee of happiness through merit and work, all in freedom and equality for men and women living on
American soil.
Britain does not want it. The political opposition between the two sides developed into an armed conflict. The
Americans organized an army in which the liberated blacks and those who were still enslaved were recruited.
The British were the same. In both camps, these black fighters committed themselves to the same cause,
freedom synonymous with the American dream. For both the independence activists, still called patriots, and the
British promised them freedom at the end of the war. The first took precedence and gained their independence,
which the British signed in Versailles, France, in 1783. It is estimated that some 5,000 black soldiers
participated in the victory for independence of the United States of America, compared with some 800 in the
losing British camp.
The independence of the United States was a fundamental pillar in the construction of the American dream; for
henceforth the Americans freely embarked on the path leading to the realization of their ideal of life expressed
in the Declaration of Independence. It was for this reason that blacks offered their strength and blood for the
establishment of this pillar. But there was still much to be done on the road to the American dream, so many
pitfalls within the new nation were enormous. It took America to fight, but to fight against itself.

2.3. Blacks in the Civil War (1861-1865)

Between the South and the North of the United States, despite the independence gained and the desire
to unite all the former colonies into one government, remained points of friction and discord. One of the major
points of this tension was the question of slavery. The northern states seemed increasingly hostile to black
slavery and its perpetuation. While those in the South whose economy was based on slavery wanted to maintain
it. The two opposing postures stirred the political spheres of the young nation. In 1861, Republican Abraham
Lincoln, then a candidate for president of the United States, organized an anti-slavery campaign that still
dissatisfied the South. When A. Lincoln was finally elected the same year, to the larvae conflict America
switched to open conflict.
The southern states withdrew from the Union to form the Confederate States of America chaired by Jefferson
Davis with Richmond as their capital. Much displeased the North and President A. Lincoln, who were anxious
to maintain the unity of the nation. When negotiations between the two parties failed to resolve the tension, war
broke out between the North and the South. It is the Civil War, also known as the American Civil War. The
Southern States fought for separation from the Northern States, while the Northern States fought for the
maintenance within the Union of all States under one Government. This war jeopardized the American dream
because the issue was freedom and equality among all Americans as President Lincoln put it: "Our nation
cannot survive half-free, half-slave." It was a devastating war that killed more than 600,000 people. Blacks were
still enlisted for freedom. They fought.
The black troops were engaged in both camps, as Alex Haley wrote (1976, p. 427):
President Davis had asked all whites in the South between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five to make a
voluntary commitment of three years, and ordered the planters to make one tenth of their male slave labour
available to the southern army free of charge, especially for engineering work.
It seems that the blacks enlisted in the southern states did not really commit. For they well understood the stakes
of this war. They knew that fighting for the South was somehow fighting for the maintenance of their slave
status; while the North fought for the abolition of this condition. This explains why many of these southern
slaves joined the armies of the northern states (A. Haley, 1976, pp. 438-439). All these blacks from the South
and those who were already blacks in the Union were actively and decisively fighting because they knew why
they were doing so. Thus:
During the Civil War, the number of Afro people who enlisted in the Union Army was 186. 097, forming 163
military units. Even more have joined the Navy Union. They were blacks who were free to free themselves, or
slaves (having fled the slave states or liberated by the Unionist troops who saw their enlistment as a step
towards their emancipation. They are used by thousands in the theatres of operations in the east, especially in
the great battles of attrition and siege which the Nordists decided to wage from the end of 1863 to crush the
Confederation definitively (Hebert Aptheker, 1947, p. 12).
In terms of intelligence, blacks were active in informing northern troops, both on the ground and through their
written reports. Among these most illustrious black intelligence officers were Mary Bowser, Harriet Tubman
and Carrie Lawton, among women; John Scobell (agent of Allan Pinkerton), George Scott, Robert Small and
Charles Wright, among the men.
The victory of the northern states in 1865 saved the American dream from peril. The union of the United States
was maintained. In 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment granted citizenship to blacks and to anyone born on
American soil. Two years later, in 1870, the Fifteenth Amendment specified that race would no longer be a
discriminatory factor restricting the right to vote. These amendments are two precious stones in the building of

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the American dream. Blacks gave their strength, intelligence, and imagination to save the American dream
under construction. But other trials still had to be overcome, otherwise the American dream would remain a
mere slogan.

III. Black Genius Against Racial Segregation And For Civil Rights
Although slavery was abolished after the victory of the northern states, those of the South defeated and
dissatisfied, invented ways to prevent blacks from exercising their full American citizenship because, the
Southern States had, since about 1880, passed laws requiring blacks to be strictly segregated in public places
and public transport; local legislators alleged that these provisions did not infringe the principle of equality
between the two races. This segregationist legislation led to a situation that Martin Luther King (2013, pp. 25-
26) describes in these terms:
It is common to note that the race relations crisis is dominating American life today. (…). After the
emancipation of 1863, Black continued to face oppression and inequality. It is true that, for a time, while the
northern occupation army was encamped in the South and the so-called Reconstruction regime remained in
force, the former slaves enjoyed a degree of pre-eminence and real political power. But they were quickly
overwhelmed by the white majority. In 1896, pursuant to Plessy v. Ferguson, a new form of slavery was born.
This decision of the Supreme Court established that the doctrine "separate but equal" now had the force of law
in the country. It was soon discovered that the practical effects of this doctrine were to strictly enforce
"separation" but that no one intended to respect "equality."
This sociological situation did not allow the existence of the American dream that is conceived as access to
fundamental freedoms and social ascension by merit for every American citizen. Segregationist laws were
therefore incompatible with the ideal of the American dream. In this context we could not talk about it as long as
a part of the American population had to suffer injustices. The situation was such that blacks, American citizens,
did not enjoy their citizenship. Citizenship presupposes civil rights, which refer to the participation of citizens in
all aspects of the life of the Republic in freedom, equality and dignity. It also implies the enjoyment of all that
the country to which one belongs offers best: good education, access to all the workings of the economy, wealth,
politics and other cultural and material goods. Racial segregation prevented black people from enjoying full
access to it.
This regime lasted a long time, the struggle of blacks also to rid the American dream of this anomaly. They did
not give up until the day when their struggle experienced apotheosis with a simple gesture performed by an
illiterate but intelligent woman: Rosa Louise McClauley Parks.
This exceptional woman launched the movement against racial segregation in the United States. On December
1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, this 42-year-old seamstress refused to give up her place to a white man on a
bus while sitting in the black party. The controller has her arrested for violating the tacit Southern state law that
a black man should give way to a white man if the bus is full. Arrested by the police, she was fined $10 (plus $4
in legal costs) on December 5 of the same year, she appealed against this judgment. She called for a boycott of
the Montgomery City Bus Company that lasted a year until the Supreme Court wronged the bus company. The
simple gesture of this woman is historic because, he tipped the struggle for civil rights in the United States into a
larger and exceptional dimension that brought the American dream into the nobility of its ideal and its
definition.
Rosa Parks died in 2005 at the age of 92 is the first Black to be honored with the unveiling of her statue on
February 27, 2013, in Washington, D.C., within the symbol and seat of American democracy, the Capitol.
Barack Obama, then President of the United States, said on this occasion: "It is thanks to these men and women
that I am here today. It is thanks to them that our children grow up in a freer and fairer country. " On the statue
of this heroine is placed a plaque with these words: "With the simplest gesture, she helped change the United
States and change the world." Words taken from Barack Obama's ceremonial speech on February 27, 2013.
Really this gesture changed the United States in depth.
He propelled a man to the fore of the American scene whose historic action brought the American dream to its
peak. This is Martin Luther King.
Following the action of Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King led the largest modern civil rights movement in the
history of the United States. In his first speech at the head of this movement, delivered on the evening of
December 5, 1955, he expressed what was to be the essence of the American dream. Indeed, he says (2013, pp.
10-12):
We are here first and foremost because we are American citizens, determined to assert our status as citizens in
the fullness of its meaning. We are here also because of our love of democracy, because we deeply believe that
democracy, transposed from a thin sheet of paper to consistent action, is the supreme form of government on
earth. And we are determined here in Montgomery to work and fight until justice springs like water and law,
like an inexhaustible torrent. Here in Montgomery, when we write future history books, someone will have to

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say: "There lived a people, a black people, a people who had the courage to defend their rights. And so it
injected a new meaning into the veins of history and civilization. "
The aspirations of the black people expressed here are a historic construction that began in 1619 and continued
until that year of 1955. In fact, as soon as they arrived in 1619, under the conditions known, in the territory of
the future United States, blacks soon had to aspire to a country where they would be free in fraternity with their
oppressors. Over time, this aspiration became a faith, a conviction in a free and fair country in which all men
will be equal. This conviction was reinforced by the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the
United States of America and by the Civil War. But it must be acknowledged that this conviction had its roots in
the Christian gospel; Negro spirituals are songs invented by black slaves to speak their faith to freedom in
America. They are songs of intense spirituality expressing immense faith in freedom and equality among men in
America. Martin Luther King is in a way the result. Thus, during the speech of acceptance of his Nobel Peace
Prize on 10 December 1964, he declared, "I accept this prize today with an immutable faith in America and a
bold faith in the future of humanity." It is therefore not surprising that the civil rights movement was carried by
this Baptist pastor. In his speech Je fait un rêve (2013, pp. 79-80) he expressed this faith in these strong terms:
With such faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to fight together, to go to prison together, to
stand together for freedom, knowing that we will be free one day. It will be the day when all the children of God
can sing together this hymn to which they will give a new meaning "My country is you, sweet land of freedom,
it is you whom I sing, the land where our fathers rest, pride of the pilgrim, on the side of every mountain that
rings the bell of freedom "- and if America is to be a great nation, it must be so. (…). When we make the bell of
freedom sound, when we let each village and hamlet square, in every State and in every city, we can hasten the
coming of the day when all the children of God, blacks and whites, Jews and gentiles, Catholics and Protestants
will be able to stand by the hand and sing the words of the old black "spiritual": "Free at last. Free at last. Thank
God Almighty, here we are free at last.
Since the 1600s, blacks had, despite their status as slaves, resolved to link their destiny with that of America.
This is what justifies this faith in America present in the spiritual Negro. In their actions, they demonstrated this
by their participation in the founding events of the American nation. It was therefore an anomaly that a part of
this nation they believed was the victim of injustices, as Mr. L. King says: "No country can go through greater
tragedy than to plunge millions of citizens into the conviction of having no part in their own society." So, they
worked to be full citizens of a country that they and their ancestors built and made great. Their faith in America
was not to train the black man against the white man; their faith in America was not to take revenge against their
oppressors. Their faith was to give life to the American dream where everyone, black and white alike, people of
the same nation in brotherhood, work for the best of the American nation and benefit from the best of the United
States of America. Responding to the segregationists of the southern states of the United States on the meaning
of the civil rights movement, M. L. King (2013, p. 70) said:
One day the South will know that when these children of God, these poor people, sat in front of the desks
forbidden to people of color, they stood up, in reality, to defend the best part of the American dream and the
most sacred values of our Jewish-Christian heritage, to bring our whole nation back to the great sources of
democracy, to the great wells deeply dug by the Founding Fathers: the Constitution and the Declaration of
Independence.
Under the struggle for the civil rights of these men and women, President Lyndon B. Johnson, through tireless
advocacy with members of Congress, passed these federal laws: the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights
Act of 1965, and the Civil Rights Act of 1968. Legally, this was the end of all forms of racial segregation
throughout the United States. Is it true that racist speech and acts in the United States today are not uncommon,
but they do not prevent demonstrations on every level of the American dream built by black force. So the
American dream is a reality. Reality often drowned by an alarmist international press that only propaganda an
America in evil with its social dramas affecting black populations. This propaganda is relayed by an Afrocentrist
opinion, maintained by an African elite, making it seem that the descendants of black slaves in America would
not be Americans like the others. This elite, enclosing the black man in the "victimism," chose to forget that the
black man was born in America because his ancestors of the continent had sold him. In truth, on the judgment of
history, the African elite is ill-placed to talk about the black problem in the United States. It was a long time ago
that the blacks of America, since the dark hours of slavery, had understood that their destiny was being traced
and bound to America; their participation in the construction of the American dream, to make America their
homeland, resulted from this awareness.
Former US President Barack Obama, himself the result of this construction, takes for granted the American
dream. In his book A Promised Land (2020, pp. 26-27) he says:
I was not spared in my personal capacity by the racist attacks, and the lasting traces of the period of slavery and
the laws Jim Crow, regulating racial segregation, blinked at me every time I walked the streets of Harlem or
some neighborhoods of the Bronx. But my own experience taught me not to take refuge too quickly behind the
claimed status of victim and to take refuge from the idea that, as I heard many blacks say in my entourage, the

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whites were all of irreparable racism. On the contrary, I was convinced that racism was not something
inevitable, and that was probably also one of the reasons why I was so keen to defend this great idea of
America: what our country was, and what it could become.
But the idea of America, the promise of America: that, I stubbornly clung to it that surprised me. "We hold for
themselves the following truths: all men are created equal" - this is America as I conceived it.
From this conception of America, there is no need to be an expert to say that the American dream is a reality.

IV. Conclusion
The United States is the only nation in the world whose rapid formation is a mixture of almost every
people on the planet. His ideal of life is faith in the equality of all men; which gives them access to life, freedom
and happiness. This ideal is the son of the American dream. The American dream is a story, a construction in
which each of the peoples of the American nation took part, to varying degrees. Blacks participated with all
their physical, mental and intellectual strength in making the American dream a symbol of American reality. If
the possibilities of being free are in America, it is because blacks have struggled and worked there; if there are
opportunities for success through work and merit in America, it is because blacks have struggled and worked
there. Samuel Cornish, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Pastor S. Wright, Mary Bowser, Carrie Lawton, John
Scobell, George Scott, Robert Small, Charles Wright, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King and thousands of other
anonymous people who fell on the battlefields of the wars They had their heads in the stars to make America
and its dream. Certainly imperfect, the existence of the American dream is not questionable.

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