Strategy 6 Inspire a Culture of Commitment to American Constitutional Democracy and One Another
Telling Our Nation’s Story

Recommendation 6.2
To coincide with the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, create a Telling Our Nation’s Story initiative to engage communities throughout the country in direct, open-ended, and inclusive conversations about the complex and always evolving American story. Led by civil society organizations, these conversations will allow participants at all points along the political spectrum to explore both their feelings about and hopes for this country.
“I think a shared national narrative unites us, but I also think it’s dividing us. You know, we were all longing for the days of Walter Cronkite and it might have seemed pretty good, but if you were African American or gay or a woman, it probably wasn’t all that great. And so now as more groups that have been excluded from the mainstream are included, whether they force their way in or they’re brought in, it changes that shared narrative. And some of that unity that we felt, whether it was artificial or not, is fractured.”
—Lowell, Massachusetts
William Sturkey, Associate Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, speaks at a virtual Academy event on "Telling Our Regional Story: The Narratives that Unite and Divide in North Carolina."