The United States traces its official birthday to the issuing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. That was 250 years ago. This weekend, we will celebrate the founding ideals that the US stands for: liberty, democracy, and equality, as the Founding Fathers broke with the British monarchy. But while those ideals are still worth celebrating, they weren't always adhered to. Our elementary history classes used to teach about the more undemocratic episodes of our nation's story as justified. Then they were taught as "just the ways things were back then," and now they are often skipped completely because there's a lot of history to cover and the unsavory parts are just too difficult- and it's sometimes seen as frankly unpatriotic. PBS fills in some of the pieces you didn't learn about in school.
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