Each Thursday, Williams leads the Prison Poets class, gathering men with different sentences and stories. They meet in a bright gray room with chalk dust and a few empty bookshelves. Across the hall, behind thick glass, the sounds of prison industry continue as men sew uniforms for the same city that once had Williams’ name on its letterhead.

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.