No single publication could capture every perspective on freedom, nor should it. These reflections are only the beginning. Throughout the summer, Voices on Freedom will continue inviting Islanders from every corner of our community to answer this question, because the story of freedom is still being written — and every voice helps shape its legacy.
Sharisse Scott-Rawlins
Two hundred and fifty years ago, a group of 56 white men signed a Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia and declared that all men are created equal and entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Yet for many women and people of color, those promises remained out of reach.
For indigenous communities, freedom came alongside displacement and the continued fight to preserve culture, land, and sovereignty. For African Americans, freedom was delayed by generations of enslavement, segregation, and systemic barriers. For immigrants, freedom often arrived hand in hand with uncertainty, sacrifice, and the challenge of building a new life. For countless others, the meaning of freedom has continued to evolve with each generation.
And yet, despite our different histories, freedom remains one of the most enduring and powerful ideas in American life.
As the nation prepares to commemorate the 250th anniversary of its founding, I invited members of Martha’s Vineyard’s diverse communities to reflect on a simple but profound question:
What does freedom mean to you and your community?
Before sharing their responses, I found myself sitting with the question myself. The truth is, freedom has never felt simple to me.
As a Black woman, I have spent much of my life searching for belonging. Not because I lacked community, but because belonging often felt conditional — dependent on where I was, how I spoke, how I dressed, how much space I took up, or whether I made others comfortable.
I have watched my family be free on paper, yet constrained by the realities of what it means to be Black in America. I have watched hard-working people do everything they were told would lead to success, only to encounter barriers they did not create. I have watched generations carry burdens that freedom alone did not erase.
And yet, I have also witnessed something remarkable. I have watched my people build lives anyway.
I have watched my grandparents create community. I have watched families create traditions. I have watched people transform houses into legacies, gatherings into institutions, and ordinary moments into something sacred.
Perhaps that is why freedom, to me, is not simply the absence of chains. It is the presence of possibility.
It is the ability to exist fully and authentically. To belong without explanation. To move through the world without constantly having to prove your worth, your humanity, or your right to be here. To dream beyond survival.
As a third-generation Islander, I have often thought about the role Martha’s Vineyard has played in that pursuit. For so many communities, this Island has represented something larger than a destination. It has been a place to gather, to celebrate, to preserve traditions, to reconnect with family, and, for many, to experience a sense of belonging that can feel elusive elsewhere.
The responses that follow are thoughtful, honest, and deeply personal. Together, they remind us that freedom is not experienced in the same way by everyone. It is shaped by history, identity, culture, opportunity, and lived experience.
That is precisely why this conversation matters. No single voice can define freedom for an entire community. We understand ourselves more fully when we listen across generations, cultures, experiences, and identities. As the curator of this section, my hope is not to offer one answer, but to create space for many — to preserve these reflections as part of Martha’s Vineyard’s living history, and to remind us that every community is stronger when every voice has the opportunity to be heard.
On an Island shaped by Wampanoag ancestry, Colonial history, Black legacy and waves of immigration and seasonal migration there are generations upon generations of families who have called this place home. These reflections offer a glimpse into the many ways freedom continues to be understood, challenged, celebrated, and pursued here on our Island.
Because 250 years later, perhaps the question is not simply whether America is free. Perhaps the question is what freedom asks of us now.
Sharisse Scott-Rawlins is a storyteller, fashion designer, and creator of Voices bySharisse, dedicated to preserving the stories, histories, and cultural legacies that define Martha’s Vineyard for generations to come.
Brad Lopes
I’m not sure what freedom is.
It’s a word uttered with such reverence and passion, from school classrooms to town halls. It’s a word that has been both a motivation and a weapon. While one may run toward freedom, another may seize it to take the ground away from underneath your feet. To me, freedom is a chameleon, with shades of red, white, and blue fluctuating as it changes nature. In its patriotic camouflage , one’s eye may be distracted from the tree branch the chameleon calls home, the very structures of power and hegemony that define freedom, both here and in every part of the world the tree roots reach. In this way, freedom constitutes a trickster more than an objective reality. If one’s freedom is dependent upon another’s unfreedom, does it even constitute freedom or, is it rather, privilege and power? How could such a society claim to value liberty for all when it has been built upon this unfreedom?
In reflecting on this question, I am reminded of two moments — two moments among a multitude of many more where Wampanoag communities and individuals expressed our lived experience within this hypocrisy and pushed back. After the 1788 passing of “An Act for the Better Regulation of the Indian, Mulatto and Negro Proprietors in Marshpee,” in Barnstable County , an oppressive legislative act meant to enact systems of state-centered control on the Wampanoag community of Mashpee, Ebenezer Webquish and 31 members of the community submitted a petition to the General Court. In this petition, one of more than 4,000 from Native communities in the commonwealth from 1640 to 1870, the community expressed their objection to this act and highlighted the hypocrisy of having fought and died in the American Revolution, just to return home and be met with a loss of sovereignty and freedom.
In a section that was later crossed out, the authors state, “Why do you violate our natural right? Why do you subject us to bondage?” Thus, liberties inherent to us as Wampanoag people were wholly denied.
Moses Pocknet, alongside 27 others from Mashpee and Herring Pond, reiterated this hypocrisy with a subsequent petition only 13 years later, stating, “At the close of a long and successful war, in which we had been honorably distinguished, that one-half the Inhabitants of Mashpee fell victims in the cause of their country and of liberty; and that many who now remain are subscribers to this petition can exhibit the traces of wounds received in facing the enemies of America. At the close of the war and since, we say, how were and still are our pleasing anticipations blasted! How could we conceive of a people who were exhibiting such illustrious proofs of their attachments to freedom and so enlarged ideas of civil liberty and of the origin and design of government, that they should not respect those rights in others which they contended for themselves?”
I’m also reminded of the speech Frank Wamsutta James gave at Cole’s Hill during the first National Day of Mourning in Plymouth. Having been censored by the governor after a review of his speech, the speech was incorporated into a group effort that had been an ongoing planning process to address the upcoming 350th anniversary of the arrival of the Mayflower and establishment of Plymouth Colony in 1970. Joined by leaders such as Tall Oak Weeden, Shirley Mills, Rayleen Bey, and many more, Frank was able to give his speech in its original form. More than 150 years after the petitions just discussed, Wampanoag people were continuing to point out the hypocrisy of freedom in the middle of a place home to romantic notions of being the birthplace of democracy from the Mayflower Compact to the Constitution. And in this reflection, I’m reminded of one line: “We fought as hard to keep our land as you the whites did to take our land away from us.”
Is this freedom, or is it power and control? Given the nature of how French Jesuits often described the “wicked liberty of the savages” in reference to social systems that recognize freedom as inherent, not granted by a centralized body, and that all beings have rights, one could argue the latter. Freedom, as defined here, and the hoarding of wealth and resources are intimately woven together. And still today, many who are unfree from the foundations of those who are.
Brad Lopes is a citizen of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah), and an educator whose work centers on indigenous history, cultural preservation, and decolonizing education through community engagement.
Krem Miskevich
“All real living is meeting.” –Martin Buber
I was asked to write about what “freedom” means to me. I think I was asked because I was born and raised in Warsaw, Poland; I am a Jew, nonbinary, queer; and I didn’t sell my pierogi to Alan Dershowitz. I was blessed, and cursed, by having the innate ability to do what feels right by me.
Different versions of “not-freedom” live in my body. From Jews enslaved in Egypt to the Temples destroyed, or Poland gone from the map of the world for 123 years; one grandmother was in a concentration camp, the other fled Jewish persecution in Russia. In 2020, I was arrested at a LGBTQ rights protest in Warsaw, detained for 24 hours, charged with crimes I didn’t commit. Throughout my life, strangers on the street would tell me that people like myself should not exist.
I experience anger, anxiety, and attachment. I catch myself judging others, having expectations.
My experiences have convinced me that there is always more. I know what I know, but I also know that I don’t know. I am open to learning, unlearning, and relearning. I can disagree with you, and still want to know where you come from and how you arrived at your opinion. In a world that so often rewards certainty, I feel free when I am able to say, “Maybe.”
To me, freedom is not the ability to do whatever, whenever you want. I feel the most free when my heart softens in the most challenging situations. When I offer and am offered understanding, and when there is the ability to be truly you and myself without the fear of being reduced to a label.
Being on Martha’s Vineyard has made me think about the difference between formal and lived freedom. At first, I felt what probably every person feels here (especially if they get on the dirt roads in West Tisbury) — an awe of the beaches, the big open water, and leaving the mainland. Not having to lock my car gives such a feeling of safety and freedom, and I miss it when I am elsewhere. On the surface, it seems like coming here is an escape from reality. Five years later, I see it very differently. I think that out of all places I’ve lived in, this Island can be the most unfree place to be (unless you hide in the West Tisbury forests and can afford to be invisible). In a community that claims to celebrate diversity, I see a lot of fear of (making) genuine difference. I have noticed that living here means you are under a microscope, performing for the people who pay your bills. I don’t care, but a lot of folks here do.
When I was about 18 years old, I wrote a Facebook status that said, “The world would be a much prettier place, if we just f_____ off from each other” (loose translation from Polish). And I still stand by it. My idea of freedom is a world where we make room for each other. More room to be human, more room for the possibility that I might be wrong about you.
Krem Miskevich is a Polish-born chef, writer, and founder of Good Pierogi, whose work explores identity, belonging, and community through food and storytelling.
Jack Fruchtman
American historians have long analyzed how the promise of American independence has worked out in practice. As Americans celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, they should note that it was also a declaration of war. The American colonies comprised a backwater country with no organized government or military force. And they faced the British Empire, with the largest, most well-trained army and navy in the world.
The late Vineyard historian David McCullough wrote the key historical assessment of the year 1776 in a book by that title. His analysis focused on the severe military struggles faced by the Continental Army, but he credits George Washington with forcing the British into a stalemate.
It should not be forgotten that these were essentially farmers and craftsmen who were setting out to win a war against the most powerful nation in the world. It turned out to be a long, hard grind that they would have lost without the financial and military assistance from two longtime enemies of Great Britain, namely France and Spain. Second, they experimented with the idea of creating a constitution 11 years later, which was rare in the 18th century because it was based on the idea of self-government.
The American Revolution was essentially an unfinished one: Historian Thomas Richards’ new study, “The Unfinished Business of 1776,” includes a subtitle, “Why the American Revolution Never Ended.” The signers of the Declaration, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights were all well-educated white men of means. The American Civil War and Reconstruction revealed many class and racial divisions, especially the issue of enslavement and women’s subordination to men. Historians like Douglas Blackmon in “Slavery by Another Name” have extensively covered the 19th century’s development of Jim Crow laws that essentially kept Blacks in subservient positions even as women fought for the right to vote.
Three post–Civil War amendments to the Constitution supposedly “fixed” some of the problems left unresolved in 1776: the 13th, ending slavery, the 14th, guaranteeing due process of law, equal protection, and birthright citizenship, and the 15th, promising the right to vote. Historian Eric Foner calls this moment “the second founding” in a 2019 book by that title. The status of women had to wait another 50 years.
Meantime, several revisionist American historians have appraised important contributions to the U.S. made by women, Black people, and Native Americans: Kathleen DuVal (University of North Carolina), Christopher Brown (Columbia), Ned Blackhawk (Yale), and Vincent Brown (Harvard). Historians like Taylor Branch have reviewed how the civil rights movement culminated in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, even as the Supreme Court recently emasculated the Voting Rights Act.
Another trend beginning at America’s founding to the present day is what Thomas Jefferson proclaimed to be “the empire of liberty.” American exceptionalism carries with it the imperial thrust of American global power. Historian Daniel Immerwahr, in “How to Hide an Empire,” has tracked American imperialism: from Jefferson to the 1823 Monroe Doctrine, and then the mid-19th century Mexican War, on to the late-19th century Spanish-American War and the seizure of Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Guam.
In the 20th century, the U.S. overthrew democratically elected leaders in Guatemala and Iran, took possession of the Northern Mariana Islands, and militarily intervened in Vietnam and elsewhere. American power expanded by establishing some 750 military bases worldwide. The current administration seized the Venezuelan president and that country’s oil production, and launched a new war in the Middle East.
Other historians have tracked the uncertain future of our constitutional republic. They ask whether the goals Americans strove to achieve in 1776 are crumpling in 2026. Here is a sampling of titles of some recent historical studies: Timothy Snyder’s “On Tyranny”; Steven Levitzky and David Ziblatt’s “How Democracies Die”; Anne Applebaum’s “Autocracy, Inc.”; and Thomas Madden’s “The Fall of Republics.”
Today the American republic is experiencing fraught times: rising inflation, an American war of choice in the Middle East, a Congress with declining authority. These problems deplete the optimism that some Americans have for the future of their country. Those who signed the Declaration of Independence knew that republics may fail. Republics were historically fragile. They sometimes fell apart. Do Americans face that today? Hopefully not, but it will take the profound effort of a unified people to reap the promise declared in 1776.
Jack Fruchtman is an author, constitutional historian, and professor emeritus whose scholarship on America’s founding and democratic ideals has spanned more than four decades. He is a regular contributor to The MV Times opinion pages.
Amanda WouldGo
Reaching back into my ancestral memory, I imagine the community to be found on Martha’s Vineyard before Noepe was usurped in the name of liberty. Those days between Moshup and the Mayflower welcome me, a near stranger to this place. I am indigenous, Aquinnah Wampanoag and Secwépemc, born and raised in Washington State. I can count the number of times I have visited the Vineyard on my fingers. And yet, this place feels like home.
Last summer, after a near 20-year absence, I returned to Martha’s Vineyard for a visit. I wandered up the Cliffs at Aquinnah, certain to find family, but not knowing whom to expect. I was greeted warmly by cousins and aunties, and quickly swept to the beach for a birthday party with people who look like me. Being raised off-Island, on the West Coast of this 250-year-old nation, amid this immediate familiarity, it is tempting to think that I would find the most freedom in precolonial times.
I just read the book “Yesteryear” by Caro Claire Burke. The non-native, tradwife, influencer protagonist is suddenly thrust back in time to live a zero-antiseptic colonial existence of butter churning and patriarchy. Accustomed to touting “traditional” forms of cooking and child rearing on social media, when faced with the harsh realities of self-sufficiency in the past, all she wants is to return to the days of internet followers and uncertain politics. Her romanticized version of colonial living is quickly darkened by her status as a woman, imprisoning individualism, and the realities of not having nannies to manage her many children.
However, that wouldn’t have been my story. I would have been on a more pristine Vineyard, sans multimillion-dollar homes and housing crises. Precolonial traditional structures were more communal, and the land was truly free. I could practice traditional arts without having to monetize them for survival. I could sit on any beach and dream. The work would have been hard, but the autonomy would have been real.
I come from a people whose liberty was stripped in the 1600s. When aliens landed, took control of the Island, put up their striped flags, and pushed us to the far corners and off into the distance. Strangers built structures here that, to this day, remove Wampanoag ability to access our homelands.
Thus, I am a sojourner, albeit one who still feels connected to the land. It is wild to be viewed as a visitor, returning via Steamship Authority to the land of my ancestors. My strong connection to my Wampanoag heritage calls to me deep in my soul. I can and will do the work of reintroducing myself to my community here. However, it is hard to wrap my mind around the freedom I feel when I’m here, and the reality of how little access I have to this place.
Two hundred and fifty years is something, Dear Martha’s Vineyard, Dear America. As we all lose our freedoms under increasingly fascist-like leadership, I can see the ways that I have benefited from our democracy and the freedoms therein. However, as an off-Island person without a solid place to land on the Vineyard, it’s hard to celebrate when our lands are hard to access, our view is obstructed by wind farms, and there isn’t enough room or financial stability for someone like me to return home.
Amanda WouldGo is a Secwépemc and Wampanoag storyteller, multidisciplinary artist, and writer whose work explores indigenous identity, healing, and the transformative power of story.
Sissy Biggers
Next Tuesday, July 7, I will be standing in the Vineyard Preservation Trust’s Old Whaling Church for Voices of Independence, the Trust’s signature MA250 event — an evening of spoken word and music bringing together Islanders, historians, community leaders, descendants of presidents, and new Americans, to reflect on the meaning of independence while reviving a tradition once at the heart of Independence Day celebrations: public oration in a place where such commemorations have taken place for generations.
The inspiration for the evening came from an unexpected place.
In the Vineyard Preservation Trust’s Old Whaling Church, I was looking through materials on Island history last August when I came across a slim volume, with a very simple title: “A Poem Recited by David Davis Before the Citizens of Edgartown, July 4, 1836, Being the Sixtieth Anniversary of American Independence.”
I was immediately captivated by the 15-page poem and its soaring language — heroic sway, gleaming blades, richer laurels, fearless might, patriot zeal, and freemen’s fire. The words leaped off the page, capturing both the drama and inspiration of the Revolution, still alive in the memories of the Vineyard’s own Revolutionary War veterans.
A little research led me to the educator David Davis, founder of Davis Academy. Davis was one of Edgartown’s leading civic figures in the mid-19th century — an attorney, judge, state representative, and advisor to Massachusetts governors. He also found time to be a poet.
What captivated me was not just the poem itself, but the act of its performance — the idea of a community gathering to mark Independence Day through words and reflection. The more I thought about it, the more I wondered what a modern version might look like. Thus was born Voices of Independence at the Old Whaling Church.
I couldn’t imagine creating a program inspired by American history without reaching out to the family of David McCullough, the Island’s pre-eminent historian, Pulitzer prizewinning author, and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Author of “1776,” “The Pioneers,” “The American Spirit,” and many other acclaimed works, McCullough helped generations of Americans better understand the people and events that shaped our nation. I reached out to Dorie Lawson McCullough, whom I had recently heard at the Martha’s Vineyard Museum speaking about “History Matters,” a collection of her late father’s writings.
When we met over a video call, I was prepared to change the date if it meant securing the family’s involvement. “July 7th,” I said. Dorie paused for a moment, smiled, and replied, “That would have been my dad’s 93rd birthday. That’s perfect.”
As I started exploring the idea, one Islander led to another. A conversation suggested a name. A chance meeting sparked a new idea. A passing comment opened another door. One musician led to another, and soon contributors became collaborators. Before long, I realized I had
assembled exactly the kind of room I had hoped for — one that only Martha’s Vineyard can provide: a chorus of independent voices unique to our Island home.
Knowing that David McCullough Jr. would represent his father, I began shaping the final program. Portions of Davis’ 1836 poem found company alongside the words of the prolific President Adams and his wife Abigail; I was led to descendants of presidents in our very midst — a Roosevelt and a Monroe; voices from the Wampanoag and Brazilian and African American communities, newly naturalized citizens, and lifelong Islanders. Somewhere along the way, I realized that while Davis’ celebration of freemen’s fire may have provided the spark, the more voices that joined the program, the less the evening became about the Declaration of Independence and the more it became about Martha’s Vineyard itself — its people, their stories, and the many ways independence is lived and understood on this Island.
Three days after Edgartown’s beloved Fourth of July parade and the last fireworks over the harbor, Voices of Independence offers a moment for reflection. Through words and music, we will consider what independence has meant to Americans, to Islanders, and to each of us.
History lives in our buildings, but it truly comes alive when people gather inside them. This summer, that is what we are celebrating at the Vineyard Preservation Trust: not simply the anniversary of a document signed 250 years ago, but the many independent voices that continue to shape Martha’s Vineyard today.
Sissy Biggers is a storyteller, television host, and program director for the Vineyard Preservation Trust, where she brings Martha’s Vineyard’s history to life through community programming and public engagement.
Nat Benjamin
As we approach our nation’s 250th birthday, it’s tempting to lean on jingoistic slogans and nod in somber solidarity over the grandiose accomplishments of the United States. But let’s not forget the audacious statements from our founding fathers in 1776: “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal … with certain inalienable Rights … Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” Those words stand as a beacon of hope today as they did then. If liberty is freedom, we are still hoping to fulfill that promise.
Freedom is not the same as independence. Independence is to be free from the control and influence of others, to be self-reliant, self-sufficient, autonomous, to rely on oneself rather than external forces. Freedom is in some ways quite the opposite. It requires humility and dependence to be part of something bigger than the self — to be allied with “we the people.”
Human beings need one another, are inspired by and depend upon one another. Only together can we be free as one. We at Gannon & Benjamin know that in a very tangible way.
When our boatyard burned to the ground in 1989, it was not “us” that rebuilt it. It was “we,” the Island community, that saw our need and came to our rescue. Our freedom to rebuild and prosper did not come from autonomy but from acceptance and gratitude. It came from a partnership with something bigger than ourselves.
I think the best synonym for freedom is courage. And if courage is freedom, fear is bondage. Fear is silent against injustice, inequality, and corruption. Fear is complicit. Inalienable Rights are for all people. We need courage to achieve them, and when we do, our covenant with all people will be sealed and self-evident.
Nat Benjamin is a master boatbuilder, sailor, and co-founder of Gannon & Benjamin Marine Railway, where craftsmanship, community, and a love of the sea have shaped Martha’s Vineyard’s maritime legacy for more than 40 years.