It is perhaps the most beautiful piece of political prose ever written, rivaling one of Shakespeare’s sensational sonnets. Whilst the opening sentence is memorable for its own contextual significance, it is the second sentence – crafted on July 2nd, 1776 – that resonates throughout the fabric of humankind.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Source: United States Declaration of Independence. Formally adopted on July 4, 1776.

When Thomas Jefferson, with the help of Benjamin Franklin, crafted those immortal words the notion of all men only referred to ‘white’ men since after all a black enslaved man was only considered to be worth three-fifths of a white man. Ninety-two years later (after the 14^th Amendment was ratified in 1868) blacks were placed on that same elevated pedestal and granted equal rights status with whites. Yet one hundred and forty-eight years after that ratification Blacks in America are still fighting to lay claims to more of those ‘unalienable Rights’ and testify to those ‘self-evident truths that they too are created equal’. But why has it taken so long, and where did it all go wrong for Blacks in America.

Black America is in her third phase of the fight for freedom. The first occurred during the period of enslavement. That battle was initially won on January 1, 1863 with President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. It signaled White America’s willingness to go to war to guarantee Blacks those ‘unalienable Rights’. That phase ended with the full abolition of slavery upon the ratification of the 13th Amendment on December 6, 1865.

However, while some political rights were won with that freedom fight the real battle for economic survival and social acceptance ensued. And like all forms of human oppression throughout the history of man, the subjugation of one form of oppression only leads to the rise of another. Post-slavery Black America had to fight against many Black Codes and Jim Crow laws and the then-prevailing legal doctrine of ‘separate but equal’. This implied (and in some cases was overtly stated) that whilst blacks may have been legally equal, they were to be socially and politically separated from White America. This second phase of the fight for freedom that was led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. sought to achieve an end to de jure (or legal and overt) racial segregation, and promote equal access to social institutions such as hospitals, schools, hotels, restaurants, public transportation, and even the ballot boxes. By 1965 it was achieved via the enactment of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.

Since the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s the form of racial oppression that many blacks now face has morphed into more de facto forms. It is the subtle forms of racism, economic deprivation, police brutality, attitudinal biases, unequal treatments under the law and within the courts. It is easy to fight racism when it manifests itself in overt forms equipped with shackles or official tags such as segregation or apartheid. However, when those labels are removed the struggle becomes harder for the public to embrace. This is the third phase, the battle for the hearts and minds of all whites (and some blacks too) to the ongoing fight for full and complete equality.

If the first phase of the struggle for racial equality could be categorized as a battle for freedom (Liberty) and the second a battle for equal access to social institutions (pursuit of Happiness) then the third phase of the struggle must deal with the fight against unjust killings and could surely be viewed as a battle for equal social, political and economic treatment (a battle for Life, or its worth).

America’s pursuit of the democratic ideal has been a long endearing struggle. Democracy remains under development in this country as it took black men ninety-four years after Thomas Jefferson’s pantheonic words to gain the constitutional right to vote (1870), and another ninety-five years after that for Congress to make it universal across the country (1965). It took white women one hundred and forty-four years before they won their constitutional right to vote (1920), and while African American women earned suffrage at the same time as their white counterparts it wasn’t until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that their rights were fully enshrined. Finally, it took one hundred and ninety-two years for the first Americans – Native American Indians – to earn full civil rights (in 1968), despite earning citizenship in 1924. And despite these gains Native Americans still do not have universal voting rights throughout the country.

We the People are continuing to form a more perfect Union here in these United States of America. It hasn’t reached full perfection yet, but with each sub population receiving its own slice of those ‘unalienable Rights’, America will eventually define what true democracy looks like. Let us hope that at the conclusion of this third phase Black America will have been blessed with her full complement of inalienable Rights.

Keith Thompson is a Senior Economist in Transfer Pricing with an agency within the US Department of the Treasury, and an adjunct Economics professor with Ramapo College of New Jersey.