3 things I've learned talking with Americans about the country's 250th birthday

By — Judy Woodruff Judy Woodruff Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/3-things-ive-learned-talking-with-americans-about-the-countrys-250th-birthday Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter 3 things I've learned talking with Americans about the country's 250th birthday Nation Jun 22, 2026 4:17 PM EDT When the year began, I set out to talk to a cross-section of people across the country, alongside some historians, to understand what it means to us to be an American at the two-and-a-half-century mark. The "America at a Crossroads" team explores that idea and how it has evolved as the country looks back on what the Founding Fathers created. Here are three things we learned. 1. Our contradictions date back to the beginning Watch the segment in the player above. The founders created something magnificent — a democratic republic where "all men" were seen as "created equal." And yet, that promise left out women, Native Americans, and Black people. The contradiction, among others, is part of the identity of America, where slavery was legal for another 90 years. "Even those that are very much in favor of ending slavery are not in favor of granting them equal treatment at all," historian Joseph Ellis told PBS News. "The failure to end slavery means in the end, the Civil War is inevitable." Educate your inbox Subscribe to Here’s the Deal, our politics newsletter for analysis you won’t find anywhere else. Lindsay Chervinsky, historian and director of the George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon, said founders understood there were problems they were "sweeping under the rug." "They could not figure out how to solve the issue of slavery," she said. "They also knew that there were problems they couldn't possibly foresee because they didn't have the ability to predict the future." READ MORE: How Americans are marking the country's big 2-5-0 The founders' hope, Chervinsky suggested, was that even if the U.S. Constitution didn't survive forever, "the republic would survive because each generation was willing to embrace that challenge to try and make the nation just a little bit better." 2. Americans believe in serving others Watch the segment in the player above. From one corner of the country to the other, I found people giving their time to their communities and people in need. Historian Elisabeth Clemens described how at the nation's founding, Benjamin Franklin had already established a volunteer fire department. At one such fire house in Patagonia, Arizona, chief Zay Hartigan explained what motivates his team. "You find a lot of volunteers, just — they look and they say, 'Someone ought to do that.' And then they say, 'Well, I'm someone, I'm going to do it,'" he said. Hartigan's colleagues were in tears explaining why they do what they do. In tiny Circleville, Ohio, we followed volunteer Matthew Lucas around as he located the graves of Revolutionary era soldiers who moved