We Hold These Truths: The Global Quest for Liberty

-We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.

-Does that have a counterpart in the Czech Declaration?

-Very much so.

And it even includes that all women are equal.

-Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

-You've got to pursue it.

It just doesn't happen automatically.

-Deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

-I think it's spurred on revolutions in other countries.

-There is no doubt Thomas Jefferson influenced the French Declaration.

-The Declaration of Independence is one of the most influential documents of all time.

But do the words still matter today?

-I think they're more important today, perhaps more than ever.

-Well, I think it was written before women had rights.

-And before some people were considered people.

-All men were not created equal when this country was founded.

That's why slavery was a thing.

-It's basically still a man's world.

Caucasian man's world.

The Declaration of Independence is about a group of people who say, "Our world is not working, and we're gonna change it."

-These are the values I would say most Hongkongers are fighting for.

-I definitely think it's gonna be a good show, and I'm looking forward to seeing it.

-I'm Doug Ginsburg, a judge on the Federal Court of Appeals.

Join me on a journey to discover the enduring legacy of our founding document, both at home and abroad.

-Major funding for this program was provided by... Additional funding was provided by... -The words of our declaration have had a universal appeal.

They've traveled through time and space and emerged in some unexpected places.

-Before Katrina, I had three big, big boats.

Right now, I have only one small boat for me and my wife.

Something to do and get some money to spend.

-Robert Nguyen and his wife, Lien, have shrimped in the Gulf of Mexico for more than 40 years.

-American fishermen, I get along with them very well.

The Nguyens were among the thousands of refugees who fled Vietnam when the North Vietnamese communists won the war.

-I don't know about communists at all, but my father-in-law, he lived with them from North Vietnam.

-North Vietnam, it's very terrible.

No freedom.

-Robert and Lien fled Saigon on her father's fishing boat.

Robert's family stayed behind.

-My family all die in Vietnam with the war.

-Vietnam was once a French colony.

Independence from France was the dream of Ho Chi Minh, who, as a young man, traveled to Paris, the capital of the French Empire.

-Paris was a crossroads of political thought.

It still is.

It was here that Ho Chi Minh marinated in the revolutionary stew of Marxism.

[ Cannons firing ] World War II changed everything.

Japan invaded Vietnam, and Ho Chi Minh went home to Hanoi.

The Allies won the war, and on the day Japan surrendered, Ho Chi Minh stood in a public square in Hanoi and read his preamble to Vietnam's Declaration of Independence.

-"Life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness."

-That's right.

The Vietnamese Declaration of Independence starts by quoting our declaration.

Ho Chi Minh went on to say... -"All the people have a right to live, to be happy and free."

-And yet, Ho ended up rejecting democracy.

The civil war that followed pitted communist North Vietnam against the South, backed by the United States.

The war claimed more than 58,000 American lives and an estimated 2 million Vietnamese.

Freedom was another casualty.

-But right now, the communist government, the people cannot go vote.

Freedom, but over there, no.

Thank you, America.

They had to be taught to help the refugee, 1975.

-Since 1776, more than 100 countries have issued a Declaration of Independence with words or ideas inspired by or derived from our own.

-Self-government as an extraordinary human invention.

Those documents that have birthed that invention get a special place in the human treasury.

The Declaration of Independence is, for sure, one of those.

-The Declaration was written by committee, but the chief author was a 33-year-old lawyer and plantation owner, Thomas Jefferson.

It was really exciting when the New York Public Library decided to reintroduce Thomas Jefferson's draft of the Declaration to the public.

It lets people see just how much change and revision, and argument went into the process.

The document didn't just sort of spring in its final form from one person's head.

-Danielle Allen is a Harvard University professor and the author of a terrific book, entitled "Our Declaration."

-I'm a total Declaration of Independence geek, and so I love every single version of the Declaration that exists.

I love the versions that are in the handwriting of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, and you can actually feel their personalities at work.

Jefferson drafted, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin came in and made changes, and then the big committee Congress got to take its crack at it and altered again about 25% of the document.

It's really important that the Declaration was written by committee.

Democratic writing means that you really push and pull to find answers, even to divisive questions that can bring people together.

There was a cluster of revisions that introduced language around the idea of a divinity, and then there were a set of revisions that took out language condemning the slave trade.

One, I think, is a good compromise, the one around religion.

The second one, I think, was a bad compromise.

-What did you mean by saying the Declaration is our patrimony?

-The Declaration is our inheritance.

It is something that earlier generations created to name their goal, their purpose.

Their purpose was self-government, institutions resting on the consent of the governed that could deliver the safety and happiness of all the people.

As such, it's the best starting point and guide we have for what it means to be democratic citizens.

-"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."

-"That to secure these rights... -"...governments are instituted among men..." -"...deriving their just powers..." -"...from the consent of the governed."

-"That whenever any form of government..." -"...becomes destructive of these ends..." -"...it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it..." -"...and to institute new government..." -"...laying its foundation on such principles... -"...and organizing its powers in such form..." -"...as to them shall see most likely..." -"...to effect their safety and happiness."

-The whole of political philosophy is in that sentence.

The most compact definition of democracy is in that sentence.

The clearest account of the rights and responsibilities of citizens is in that sentence.

That's all we need.

-Where was that taken from?

-The Declaration of Independence.

-Yeah?

That -- that doesn't sound very British.

-No, no, it was Americans.

-Yeah?

-Though, I think they got the idea from John Locke, actually.

-John Locke, the philosopher?

Now, he was English, I think.

Was he not?

-Oh, yeah.

-Okay.

-The founders were steeped in political theory, from Aristotle and Cicero to Locke and Rousseau.

-The Roman politician Cicero had argued that the health and well-being of the people should be the supreme law.

The concept of pursuit of happiness and safety and happiness in the second sentence are a modernization of that idea.

The second body of material comes from arguments about rights -- rights of life and liberty and property.

So the really interesting thing that happens is that the drafters of the Declaration didn't say "life, liberty, and property."

They chose "happiness" instead.

And in that moment, they were actually putting aside the vocabulary of the slave-holding faction.

-Move!

-Even after blood was shed at Lexington and Concord... [ Gunfire ] [ Drums and fife play ] [ Gunfire ] -...few Americans desired separation from Britain.

-Fire!

[ Gunfire ] -The founders would never have declared independence without, as the Declaration put it, the consent of the governed, or at least enough of them.

Print media definitely turns the tide of the revolution.

-Emily Sneff is an historian of the Declaration of Independence.

-You have newspapers that are printed, usually on a weekly basis.

You have broadsides that are posted up on buildings.

And then, you also have pamphlets, and you could even bind your pamphlets into a book.

-In January of 1776, an anonymous 47-page pamphlet appears in Philadelphia, urging a radical idea -- independence.

The author is a grammar-school dropout from a small town in England, a former tax collector, and a failure at most of the jobs he tried -- Thomas Paine.

-He gets a letter of introduction from Ben Franklin and sails for Philadelphia.

So, he arrives here as someone very interested in what's happening in the colonies.

-Paine finds work at a magazine, finally a job at which he excels.

And in language clear to the average American, he writes a pamphlet with a straightforward title, Common Sense.

-All of a sudden, Common Sense is shorthand for support of independence.

-Common Sense goes viral.

In a matter of months, printers sell tens of thousands of copies.

-Common Sense did sell more than any other pamphlet, by far.

-The momentous words "Free and Independent States" in the final lines of Common Sense also will appear in the final lines of the Declaration, capital letters and all.

The Continental Congress declares independence, and a rebellion becomes a revolution.

[ Gunfire ] Six months after the Declaration, a free black man in Boston, named Prince Hall, decided to take the founders at their word, that all men are created equal.

-And he took the Declaration of Independence and grabbed a lot of its words, and rewrote it to submit a petition arguing for the abolition of enslavement.

-It proclaims that the many blacks held in a state of slavery "have in common with all other men a natural and unalienable right to that freedom which the great parent of the universe hath bestowed equally on all mankind."

-So, it's important that that vocabulary of equality in the Declaration recognizes, helping to crystallize and launch the abolitionist movement.

-Massachusetts denied Hall's petition, but not for long.

In 1780, Pennsylvania abolished slavery, and Massachusetts followed suit three years later.

-The news of the Declaration travels by newspapers rather than by formal diplomatic channels.

And there's a plan to get it overseas.

They don't care about sending it to George III.

They want France.

-The United States of America were born here, in Paris, when Ben Franklin signed the first Treaty of Alliance with the French.

So, your country was born here.

-The American Revolution inspires hundreds of foreigners to come join the fight, including the 19-year-old French nobleman Gilbert du Motir, the Marquis de Lafayette.

He joins General Washington's staff, and the two hit it off at once.

Washington is old enough to be his father, and he treats Lafayette like a son.

Once America has won its independence, Lafayette returns to France, now a nation on the brink of revolution.

The Palais Royal is called the birthplace of the French Revolution.

Actually, it was owned by the king's cousin, but it was an oasis of freedom under the monarchy.

Here, you could do whatever you wanted -- take a walk, visit a caf, gamble, visit a prostitute.

But most important of all, because the police were not allowed in, you could say what was on your mind, even about the king.

Revolutionary ideas could circulate here, and they did, in pamphlets like this one, "What is the Third Estate?"

The people of France were divided into three estates or assemblies.

The first estate was the clergy, the second, the nobles, and the third estate was everybody else.

Representatives of these three estates came together as the Estates General, an advisory body to the King.

But the clerics and nobles, a tiny fraction of the population, had more votes than the common people.

This pamphlet demanded more representation for the people.

A spark that lit the fuse of revolution.

[ Gunfire ] On July 14, 1789, a mob storms the Bastille prison, a hated symbol of royal power.

A riot becomes a revolution, and Bastille Day would become France's national holiday.

[ Gunfire ] This is from our Declaration of Independence.

-"That whenever any form of the government..." -"...becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people..." -"...to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government."

-What do you know about the Marquis de Lafayette?

-Marquis de...?

-Marquis de Lafayette?

-I have never heard of this.

-Marquis de Lafayette?

No, I don't know who that is.

-Okay.

-I only know, really, mostly about the writing of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, how it was influenced by the U.S.

Declaration.

-Well, that's great.

You're right on track.

-Oh, good.

Okay.

Yeah.

[ Chuckles ] -I've been invited to see a treasure at the Museum of the National Archives of France.

Very glad to be here with Monsieur Francois-Henri Briard, a Supreme Court advocate and a scholar of French history and Franco-American relations.

We were actually able to see and read and touch the Declaration of the Rights of Man, the draft by Lafayette.

-Thomas Jefferson was in Paris in 1789.

So was Lafayette.

And they worked together on different drafts of the French declaration.

And what is interesting is that Lafayette uses the word "inalienable."

It probably comes from the 1776 Declaration of Independence.

-Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

-The U.S.

Declaration.

-"Inalienable rights," yes.

-Yes.

-The wording may be slightly different, but the basic principles are the same.

-So, this is the final version as it's written out.

-It is.

And as you know, it was a compromise between different drafts.

We, the French and the Americans, built democracy together.

-The American Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man, which followed it, would become models for the independence movements that swept the world in the 1800s and 1900s.

-I've always kind of seen France and America as kind of brothers in freedom, sisters in freedom, right?

We always kind of have each other's back, right?

-I couldn't agree more.

-Yeah.

[ Both laugh ] -The French Revolution began with the promise of liberty, equality, and fraternity, or brotherhood.

That's not how it ended.

This is the Palace of Versailles, and it was the home of King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette.

And, clearly, they lived like kings.

Meanwhile, in 1789, Parisians were starving due to a poor wheat harvest and high food prices.

On October 5th, thousands of hungry, angry women marched from Paris on Versailles.

-Lafayette was asked to accompany this march because he was at the head of the National Guard.

-Sabine Renault Sabloniere is a descendant of the Marquis de Lafayette.

Did they get into the palace?

-Some of them managed to go into the palace.

They killed some guards.

The royal family was very afraid.

Lafayette managed to climb up the apartment of the royal family, and he had this incredible idea to take the queen and her children to the balcony.

-Right here?

-Right here.

-Yeah.

-Yes.

-He took the queen's hand and kissed her.

And all of a sudden, the mob calmed down.

-Lafayette saved them from the mob, but the king would eventually lose his head.

And nine months later, so would the Queen.

-This is what we call "la terreur," you know, the terror time.

Every day, hundreds of Parisians were executed with the guillotine, you know?

Yeah, it was a terrible time.

-The guillotine claimed more than 16,000 lives, mostly priests and nobles.

-You were more successful in making democracy in the U.S. than we were in France.

-Our revolution succeeded.

The French Revolution failed.

This room, this palace, really says it all.

France had a small nobility, a very large peasant class, and hardly anything in between.

Unlike France, the 13 colonies had a thriving middle class, 150 years of virtual self-governance, and an ocean of distance from Britain.

-That gave them the time and space to build up functioning habits and practices of governance.

-We had to move from 40-kings history to a republic.

-So, France had the challenge of how to undo something as much as how to build something.

-What can you tell me about the Marquis de Lafayette?

-Marquis de...?

-He was part of the French Revolution.

-Oh, all right.

-He was not so popular here.

-In America, Lafayette is a war hero, with this park opposite the White House named after him.

In fact, Lafayette took America to his grave.

-Lafayette had two wishes -- being buried near his wife and being buried in the American soil.

When he came back from his last travel in America, he brought a handful of American soil.

And when he died, his son, George Washington de Lafayette, complies with his wish, and he was buried in the American soil.

-Liberty, galit, fraternit.

-Okay.

-What does it mean to you?

-All French people are -- are my brothers.

-Do you think that the country has achieved that?

-I think no.

-The revolution, it's a permanent fight.

-Permanent fight?

That's true everywhere, I think.

-Yes, you're right.

-Yes.

-There is some bad things in the country, but I feel like country is great.

-I'm lucky I was born in France because I'm a girl, because I'm queer, because of many reasons.

So I'm glad I'm here because I'm free to be whoever I am.

Like, I can walk in the streets, like, dressed like this.

[ Both laugh ] -So, the first struggle was the struggle for independence.

What comes next?

What's after that?

Well, then you take it the step further and say, "I'm an independent person, and these are my rights.

-In the mid 19th century, women started working outside the home in factories like this.

They were paid less than men, and they turned their wages over to their husbands.

Women were, in every sense, second-class citizens.

They couldn't buy land, they couldn't sign a contract, and they couldn't vote.

-We have life so easy, right?

We go flip on the light switch, turn on the water, we flush a toilet.

Even the simplest of things were difficult for them.

-For two days in July 1848, 300 people, mostly locals, mostly women, and mostly Quakers, held America's first convention for women's rights right here.

-So, when we look at the Women's Rights Convention, we look at the larger movements that are going on -- abolition, temperance, the labor movement.

Janine Waller is the chief of interpretation at the Women's Rights National Historical Park.

At this point after the revolution, everyone is really trying to figure out, "What does it mean to be an American?

What does it mean to be a citizen?"

-They weren't going to wait for justice.

They were going to go find it and make justice.

-How did they settle on the Declaration of Independence as the document on which to base their resolution?

-They really wanted to find something that would speak to the soul of the nation, and there was nothing stronger than the Declaration of Independence.

-The Declaration of Independence gave this country a platform to move towards justice.

-It was familiar, and it has one of the most famous beginnings, right?

"We hold these truths... -"...to be self-evident, that all men..." -"...that all men..." -"...that all men are created equal."

Well, the obvious omission there is that all men and women.

-"...that all men and women..." -"...that all men and women are created equal."

-The Declaration of Sentiments takes the Declaration of Independence and then reworks it a bit to make it applicable to women.

Do you think the Declaration of Independence didn't really apply to women before that?

-I think you should ask a man that question.

Are you accepting women as equals, and are you allowing women the opportunity to go out and pursue happiness and life and liberty?

-When the Declaration of Independence says "all men are created equal," they are using the word "men" in a universal fashion.

But even as they did that, they were reserving power for a subset of humankind.

That's where they made their mistake.

-History doesn't arc towards justice on its own.

It takes people who are willing to make those bold statements.

-And that was how they wanted to start the convention, recognizing that the American experiment is incomplete.

And I can't believe how well they wrote it.

-And it shows how inspiring words can be.

-One attendee was a former slave, Frederick Douglass, who covered the convention in his newspaper, The North Star.

-From there, it was picked up across the nation.

Some cases for lauding, some cases for ridicule.

You know, "Look at what the women in Seneca Falls are doing," and "Look at what the women in Seneca Falls are doing."

-The convention adopted nine resolutions, the most controversial of which was to grant women the vote.

-I can't vote a woman into office until I can vote.

Once I can vote, I can run for office.

Every time I see "first woman," it makes me angry that somebody had to punch through that barrier.

-Women didn't get the vote until the 20th century.

Meantime, a 19th-century invention gave them a taste of freedom.

-Women and girls, especially, could get on a bicycle and go much greater distances than they ever could before and do it alone.

Susan B. Anthony said that it was the single most important technological advancement for the independence of women.

-I get on my bike, and it does feel like freedom.

-Recognize this American revolutionary?

Simon Bolivar, the South American Revolutionary, the George Washington of Latin America, and the most important figure in its history.

As a young man, Simon Bolivar traveled to the United States.

He admired the American Revolution.

Early in the 19th century, independence was slowly catching on, but nowhere with more success than in Latin America.

Bolivar drove the Spanish from what are now Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, Peru, Venezuela, and the country named for him, Bolivia.

It was the first of four great waves of independence that invoked the spirit of the American Revolution.

Bolivar sought to create a strong federal union, a United States of Latin America.

Instead, each nation went its own way.

Venezuela was the first nation that Bolivar liberated.

And in his honor, Venezuela gave the statue to the people of... Miami.

Miami is a vibrant, multicultural city that's become a haven for Latin Americans seeking a new life.

And tens of thousands of Venezuelans are making new lives here.

When designer Angel Sanchez moved to the U.S. from Venezuela in 2002, he was already well-known back home.

-Venezuela was amazing country, still is amazing country.

So that was a big decision for me to leave my country.

-At his studio in Miami, he creates evening and bridal wear for an international clientele.

-Very well-educated people feel forced to leave the country for so many reason, for security, for to do something that they wanted.

-After more than two decades of dictatorship, more than half of all Venezuelans now live in poverty.

More than 7 million have left the country.

-Deep in our hearts, as Venezuelans, we feel like we don't have a country anymore.

-Mariela Briceno is a graduate of a program that helped her start her own business.

-Focus Mujeres Emprendedoras, or women entrepreneurs in English, is a program developed by CISNEROS to help Venezuelan women start their businesses in the U.S. -Maria Arcaya is the founder of Focus Mujeres Emprendedoras.

-Being an entrepreneur can sometimes be lonely and a challenge, and for these women who are immigrants, even more so, and they come to the program seeking support and a community that they can be a part of.

Saja Tovar completed the program, and she proved to be very enthusiastic and a hard worker.

-Saja works as Angel Sanchez's assistant, consulting with him about designs and creating the samples for his collections.

-I follow his career since I was a kid.

-Mm-hmm.

-When I graduate from high school, I study fashion design.

-She didn't have any opportunities.

She feels frustrated.

She came from a country that was in bad, bad shape.

-Saja came to the U.S. to pursue her dream of starting her own company.

-When I came here, it wasn't easy.

I work a lot.

I always keep in mind to save money, to create my own business.

-Her business, Saja Swimwear, sells custom bathing suits created and sewn by Saja.

So right now, your business, your office, your factory, your distribution is all in this room.

-All in this room.

Yeah.

-So, you're very enterprising?

-Yes.

[ Chuckles ] -I think, at the end of the day, when we came here to United States, we were looking for freedom, and we were looking for a better future.

And that's the pursuit of happiness.

-"We hold these truths to be self-evident..." -"...life, liberty and pursuit of the happiness."

-What do you think?

-I love it.

[ Both laugh ] -I live my American dream here, in the United States.

-My favorite part is liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

That's why I came here.

-From the day our Declaration of Independence was signed, it has, like a beacon, attracted immigrants to our shores.

Some come to save their very lives, some for greater liberty, others to pursue their happiness.

They have made us a better nation because they not only embrace our ideals, they live them.

As the Declaration influenced the independence movements in South America, it also inspired a liberation movement here at home, with its own charismatic leader, Frederick Douglass.

Although denied a formal education, he was to become one of the greatest orators in American history.

When he was 7 or 8, Frederick Douglass was sent from his home in the eastern shore of Maryland to this neighborhood in Baltimore, near the waterfront, to live with a family named Auld and be a companion to their young son.

Against her husband's wishes, Mrs. Auld taught Frederick the alphabet.

Once armed with his ABCs, he would offer bread to white children to read to him, and in this way, he taught himself to read.

As a young man, Douglass worked in the Port of Baltimore as a skilled caulker and shipbuilder.

In 1838, at the age of 20, he borrowed identification papers from a free black sailor and fled to freedom via the Underground Railroad.

-The Founding Fathers had good intentions, but, again, when this country declared the Declaration of Independence, you know, there was still slavery.

-This whole city we're in here, most of it was built on the back of slavery.

And that's one of those things that perhaps we're uncomfortable to speak about, but it's very much true.

-Four years after attending the Women's Convention in Seneca Falls, Douglass would give a landmark speech, pointing out the hypocrisy in the Declaration of Independence.

-"What to the American slave is your 4th of July?

What have I or those I represent to do with your national independence?

Are the great principles of political freedom, natural justice, embodied in the Declaration of Independence extended to us?"

I didn't understand it emotionally, when I read it, and we didn't have liberty and freedom and the pursuit of happiness at the time.

-Ever hopeful, Douglass challenged his fellow countrymen to live up to the words of the founders.

-"They were statesmen, patriots, and heroes, he said.

With them, justice, liberty, and humanity were final.

Not slavery and oppression."

-The man whose ideals Douglass invoked, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, was himself torn over slavery.

He helped end the transatlantic slave trade.

Yet, at his death, he held more than 100 slaves.

Jefferson feared for the future, a country so torn between slavery and freedom that it would divide.

And, of course, that is exactly what happened.

In 1861, shortly after Lincoln becomes president, the Southern states secede to form a new nation, and America is plunged into a horrific civil war.

[ Drumming ] [ Indistinct shouting ] [ Cannons firing ] [ Gunfire ] In the second year of the war, Lincoln strikes a blow for freedom by issuing an executive order that would free 3 million slaves.

Today, we know that order as the Emancipation Proclamation.

-He famously said, "As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master.

That is the only definition of democracy I know.

And anything that varies from that to any degree is not democracy."

-In the third year of the war, he delivers one of the greatest speeches in our history -- the Gettysburg Address.

-"Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."

-Which is true.

We are all created equal.

You cut me, I bleed red, you cut you, you bleed red.

-No matter height, weight, race, sex, gender, we're all created equal.

-Lincoln thought the world would little note nor long remember his words.

But here they are, memorialized in marble, reminding us of the ideals set forth in the Declaration.

In the 20th century, three waves of independence would follow the one that had swept Latin America in the 19th century.

Each of the three would shape the history of the Czech people.

At the end of the First World War, four empires lay in ruins -- the Austro-Hungarian, German, Ottoman, and Russian.

And from those ruins rose new nations in a second wave of independence, including Czechoslovakia.

Tomas Masaryk, philosopher, statesman, and a founder of Czechoslovakia.

During a stay in Washington in 1918, Masaryk would draft his country's Declaration of Independence.

Adla Gjuricov is a professor at the Institute for Contemporary History.

Could you tell me what the representatives in Washington did to relate the declaration to that of America?

-So, while declaring independence in the so-called Washington Declaration on the 18th of October, they also said, [ Speaking in Czech ] And in English, this says, "We accept the American principles as laid down by President Wilson, the principles of liberated mankind, of the actual equality of nations and of governments, deriving all their just power from the consent of the governed."

So, there is this open reference, which, of course, was partly a real admiration for the American history and democracy and partly a tactical step.

-The Czech Declaration cites the American Declaration of Independence, the French Declaration of the Rights of Man, the ideals of Abraham Lincoln, and the 14-point proposal of President Woodrow Wilson for shaping the post-war world, including self-determination for the peoples of Central Europe.

The document provided full equality for women before American women even had the right to vote.

-It was freedom, it was democracy, and it was after 500 years.

We were a unique country, so it was amazing.

-Sad to say, Czechoslovakia's independence lasted barely a generation.

On March the 12th, 1938, without warning, the German armies marched over the Austrian border.

Why was Austria important to Hitler?

It put him on the southern flank of Czechoslovakia, and Czechoslovakia was the key to the control of Eastern Europe.

-The European democracies, led by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, agreed to let Hitler seize the western part of Czechoslovakia and showed the world what happens when you appease an aggressor.

Six months later, Hitler swallowed the rest of Czechoslovakia.

-...marched in and took the whole of the Czech state.

-Six months after that, he plunged Europe into the Second World War.

[ Cannons firing ] The end of the Second World War triggered the third wave of independence as people around the world threw off colonial rule.

More than 100 nations would emerge from Europe's empires, more than 50 from the British Empire alone, including India, the jewel in the crown.

From the French, more than 20 nations, and still more from the Dutch, Spanish, and Portuguese empires.

In Europe, the tide ran the other way.

Soviet dictator Josef Stalin imprisoned Eastern Europe behind an iron curtain.

-This is the entrance to a nuclear bunker which was built in the '50s.

-Ladislav Winter is an expert on the Soviet era in Prague.

-It was designed to take care of up to 5,000 civilians.

-The United States was not about to bomb anybody, so why all of this?

-Well, that's what you were told.

Basically, every single day, we were, you know, brainwashed with the U.S. and NATO, and the Germans are going to attack us, right?

The bad guys, that's you, bad capitalists, green color.

The good guys are pink.

-You are supposed to be grateful for this.

-"Look what we do for you, little kids.

We build nuclear bunkers for you so you can survive, you know, their nuclear attack.

Who is the better society?

Do they have their bunkers?

No, they don't."

-Two decades into the Cold War, Czechs longed for freedom.

-The Communist Party had an internal struggle, and the winner, Alexander Dubcek, the new first secretary, was a surprising one.

He suddenly was a different leader.

-In 1968, Dubcek announced a policy he called communism with a human face, giving Czechs a fleeting glimpse of freedom, known as the Prague Spring.

-People really endorsed very far-reaching and widespread reforms.

And this was not what the Communist Party, in fact, intended in the longer term.

-Prague Spring turned to summer crackdown.

On August 20th, 600,000 troops from other Soviet bloc nations -- Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland -- invaded Czechoslovakia.

-Wenceslas Square is really, you know, the political center of the city.

In 1968, there would be Soviet tanks, you know, parked all round and people crawling up the tanks and trying to discuss the situation with the Soviet soldiers.

But there were posters all around, there were graffiti on the walls, just saying, "Go home, Ivan."

-The invaders killed more than 100 protesters.

The hopes of the Prague Spring wilted.

-This building behind us was used by the Secret Service.

Anybody who had a problem with the Communist regime was basically taken down here for questioning, tortured, interrogated.

If you would receive a letter to come down here, you knew it's not going to be a picnic time.

-You personally had such a letter.

-I had received a letter to come down here, but, luckily, I have already had a ticket to Yugoslavia.

I just took the plane and disappeared, yeah.

[ Crowd clapping ] -Two decades later, a political earthquake shakes Europe.

The fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union set off the fourth great wave of independence.

The scene is Wenceslas Square.

Now the time is 1989.

You were here then?

-Oh, yes, every day.

And it was packed with people.

On the 17th of November, there was a demonstration at a different place of the city.

Students were brutally beaten by the police.

-The special police forces start beating these people up.

A lot of people ended up in hospitals, police stations.

They were loaded up into these police vans, driven outside of the city.

And these people would come back for more.

-My high school was just off that street on the left.

And every day, after typing and copying leaflets, we would come here for a demonstration.

-So, did you participate in the activities?

-Of course.

Half of my family was in the jail, and another half of the family was supporting the regimes.

-How many people were killed?

-Nobody.

Nobody died.

That's why we called this the Velvet Revolution because nobody died.

-On November 20, half a million protesters thronged into this square.

11 days later, the communist government resigned.

-We were so excited.

We are free.

We can travel, and we can do all that we want.

-I was afraid of United States, and then the regime changed.

And now I'm afraid of Russia.

-We don't know what will happen in the future, but I hope it will be fine.

-With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, 14 countries, 15 if you count Russia, became independent, including the three Baltic states and 11 others in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

-You know, when one thinks about whether the American Declaration is somehow still alive at the end of the Communist era, somehow the democratic ideal came up again with people who have mostly not lived in democracy for all of their lives.

Somehow it is with us and in us, even if we don't have the concepts, the words, and the democratic practice.

-At the dawn of the 20th century, most of the world was ruled by autocrats.

Today, more than half of all governments are democracies where the government has the consent of the governed -- a remarkable achievement for liberty but by no means the end of the story.

Back home, the Declaration was continuing to shape our democracy.

When I was born, just after World War II, "Jim Crow" was alive and well.

That was the term for legally enforced segregation of blacks from whites.

-100 years ago, maybe even 50 years ago, there is a very high likelihood I wouldn't just be walking and have somebody stop me for an interview, more specifically, an older white man.

-If you're free as a citizen, you can have that freedom only if you have equality with the other citizens.

So, freedom and equality have always belonged together.

-The equality promised in the Declaration was denied to most black Americans because of legalized discrimination in housing, and schooling, employment, and voting.

A decade after the Supreme Court's landmark decision prohibiting segregation in public schools, a civil-rights bill to safeguard the liberties of black Americans languished in the Congress.

To rally support for the bill, black leaders in 1963 organized a March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

Organizers expected more than 100,000 people to attend, but about 250,000 people showed up.

Like millions of Americans, I watched it on TV.

Martin Luther King stood over there in front of the Lincoln Memorial and gave a speech that rivals the Gettysburg Address in its eloquence.

Like Frederick Douglass a century before and like the women of Seneca Falls, Dr. King reminded his fellow Americans of their shared birthright of the Declaration of Independence -- life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, a sacred pledge that he likened to a promissory note long past due.

-When Dr. King said it's a promissory note, eventually, we will get to what the Declaration of Independence actually should have meant when the founding fathers said it, right?

-Dr. King believed that America's enduring ability to redeem itself.

He said he dreamt of the time when his children would be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

-We integrated my high school in 1973.

I was thinking, "'73, one generation from now, this is truly going to be a race-neutral kind of environment."

I'm somewhat disappointed in that, but again, I'm hopeful.

-Today, Americans of every color live, go to school, worship, and work side by side.

America is a far better place than it was when I was born -- more diverse, more tolerant, not equal, but ever more equal.

For those of us who have always lived in the United States, we don't know what it would be like to live without the rule of law.

But a lot of people in this world have never had that.

This may look like China, but it's not.

We're in Chinatown in London.

Terry Leung co-founded Justitia Hong Kong to help Hongkongers in the U.K. support each other and their democracy movement.

Terry, does this area remind you of home?

-It sort of remind me of home, but at the same time, it's a little bit complicated.

Hong Kong used to be British colony, but it's not British.

It doesn't only have British culture.

It also have Eastern cultures.

Hong Kong is quite a unique place around the world.

-In 1842, after losing the first Opium War, China ceded Hong Kong to Britain.

In 1898, after losing the second Opium War, China leased the new territories, including Hong Kong, to Britain for 99 years.

A British outpost in the early 19th century, the Port of Hong Kong evolved by the late 20th century into a global powerhouse of banking and commerce.

In 1997, Britain returned Hong Kong to China.

China agreed to the principle of one country, two systems.

Hong Kong would be recognized as Chinese territory, but it could remain a capitalist democracy for 50 years.

Didn't quite work out that way.

Would you read this passage here for me?

-Sure.

"That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

-So, before the turnover in 1997, did that describe Hong Kong?

-Well, that was the promise.

[ Chuckles ] -And -- -China never honored it.

-Right.

Under Chinese dictator Xi Jinping, democracy in Hong Kong was all but eliminated.

Simon Cheng is a democracy activist and founder of Hongkongers in Britain.

While on a business trip in mainland China, he was detained and tortured by the authorities before being granted political asylum in the U.K. -We provide mental-health support, legal and professional referrals, and sometime encourage them to set up a new business in the U.K. -You were afraid in Hong Kong.

Are you afraid here?

-Yes, absolutely.

Not only me but many other ordinary members of Hongkongers.

They have the fear to join any protest about Hong Kong in China, even in the U.K. -You ever had the sense that you're being followed?

-The law said, you know, they would keep hunting down on us.

So that's why I always feeling I being monitored.

-Debra Wong fled Hong Kong with her family.

She wants her children to grow up in a free country.

-I was still there in 2019 when the uprising started, and I was in the first couple of huge demonstrations.

But when the crackdown came, there was very little the people could do to stop the police, and pretty soon, we lost the battle.

And after each defeat, obviously, it shows your enemy the limits of your power.

-This painting commemorates the Umbrella Revolution in 2015.

This is Lumli, Lumlong.

-I am Lumlong, yeah.

-We are a couple.

Yeah.

-And we are artists from Hong Kong.

-Lumli and Lumlong were forced into exile for their art.

-We didn't choose to be a political artist.

The government forced us to do so.

Still remember the police had just knocked on the door, and then he said, "There is a case about you both."

And then I asked him, "What case is it?"

And then he said, "I can't tell you, but I'll be back."

Yeah, just like the Terminator.

-Terminator.

So, we were scared.

We decided to flee Hong Kong to the U.K. We closed our painting studio and shipped our paintings within 20 days.

It's very important for us to present our paintings online.

It is like a window for us to communicate with Hong Kong people and our families.

-We always work together.

I do the left side, and she do the right side.

And I'm the day shift, and she's the night shift.

-I try to find love, and he tries to find justice.

-This is about 2019 protest in Hong Kong.

So many people were disappeared, and most of them were found dead, falling from the building.

So we believe that they are killed by the police.

We use the puzzle to symbolize that the truth is -- is we don't know the truth.

-People think that our paintings are too terrifying.

-We always say that the reality is more terrifying than our art.

-Up to half a million Hongkongers are expected to arrive here on a British national overseas visa -- mostly professionals -- and the vast majority do not plan to return to Hong Kong.

Terry Leung holds events for Hongkongers to keep in touch and to keep their culture alive.

-Hong Kong is a place where East meets West.

That's what makes Hongkongers' identity.

-We hope to preserve our own culture and integrate it with the British culture.

-The question is "What do we need for another wave of independent movement?"

-Now, most of the peoples of the world are independent.

Once U.S. independence was secured, the significance for us of the Declaration shifted to liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

-"Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

These are the values that we want to have.

-What too many people lack today is liberty and a government by the consent of the governed.

-I wish one day, Hong Kong will receive the democracy and freedom that it was promised.

-We may see, or we may not see, but we still fight for it.

-The color of independence may not be the one that we understand in history.

The group of people decide to build a kind of nationhood in understanding rather than geographically.

-And we hope the next generation will never forget our past.

-For myself, I want to just be able to play the piano.

And I also want to see my children grow up happy.

[ Drumming ] [ Fife plays ] -Every 4th of July, we celebrate our independence.

But do we appreciate our Declaration of Independence?

-I think there's a need for us to recenter and get grounded again with what our founding fathers meant us to go by, and I think the Declaration certainly provides that for us.

-And I hope we'll keep passing it on continuously as a starting point for how we teach young people about the project of democracy.

-Story of democracy is to bring more people in and to make more people a part of it.

[ Drumming ] -Every day, there's still the same amount of injustice, so this one day isn't going to change anything.

-I'm glad when people can work together.

I think there's room for improvement, but I think we'll get there.

-I'm, like, hopeful.

Like, I feel like -- like our generation, and next generations, will at least try to make the world a better place.

-I think what probably is the most important is that we teach the next generation how to learn from our mistakes.

-I think we've come a long way just in my lifetime.

I can't wait to see how far we go in the lifetime of my children that are here next to me.

-You do have people of color and Indigenous and Latin Americans and Asian-Americans in high-visibility positions.

-And I'm proud of where I came from, but I'm more proud where I am today.

-I think it's our responsibility, um, as citizens, to apply pressure to our lawmakers.

-July 4th does symbolize that commitment to self-government, to being free and equal citizens, gives us a holiday that really is for everybody.

-I'm still hopeful that we'll get to that utopian idea that our founding fathers had in mind.

-We've come a long way since 1776, but the quest for liberty and equality and the pursuit of happiness never end.

The words of our Declaration can unite us and light the way as we go forward.

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