Once, not so long ago, the United States promised to place Harriet Tubman’s face on the $20 bill. It was more than a design change; it was to be an act of national recognition, an admission that greatness in America has never belonged solely to those who wrote its laws or commanded its armies, but to those who broke its chains.

But for many Black Americans, the anniversary has become something else entirely. Rather than celebrating 250 years of freedom, they are asking whether the nation has fully delivered on promises made in 1776 while millions of Africans remained enslaved and generations of their descendants continued to fight for rights guaranteed to others.