I-Search Paper: How has the idea of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness contradicted itself over America’s history?

Research Paper: How has the idea of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness contradicted itself over America’s history? 

The ‘Pursuit of Happiness.’ Thomas Jefferson, along with others, drafted the Declaration of Independence back in 1776. How has it held up throughout history up to this point? In the process of drafting this research paper, I realized a few things. The disparities amongst peoples and failures of the United States are being constantly reiterated and recanted around the world. Going into the process of researching for and typing this paper, I had a general idea of what it was that was contradictory, and quite frankly, a massive failure by the United States to keep ‘Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness’ at the foreground of American idealism. As we all know, opinions are subjective, with that being said, biases run rampant throughout our country’s people as well as the government. Sadly, in the past, these very same biases and ideologies have cost the lives of American citizens. Those that have survived being deprived of their liberty, have suffered massive economic failure and long-lasting poverty within their communities, in the present, this still continues. When I came up with my question, “How has the idea of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness contradicted itself over America’s history?,” my mind was immediately taken to 1619 when the first slaves were brought to early colonies of America, even today the black American communities across our country still suffer and on occasion fall under the poverty line. Moreover, sometime after the first slaves were brought to the US, Euro-Americans destroyed Native American communities. They were forced into a set of rules, laws, and societal standards that were non-existent within their societies previously. Both of these groups of people were deprived of their sovereignty, and therefore denied ‘Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.’ These thoughts and examples had led me into a researching spree, where I found this subject is not as cut and dry as I had expected. History was reshaped by those that wrote it. The early American conquerors did more than just conquer and destroy lives, they lied about it and they justified their actions. So, I wanted to find some stories that were substantive and showed what it was like to live in opposition to early Euro-Americans. 

The process of me finding the sources I have was fairly simple. I wanted to see how people have fared with not being given the same opportunities other groups had. With this in mind, I knew that my base was White Euro-Americans, but what about the groups that were affected by the decisions they made? That is where I began, with that question in mind, so I looked up on google ‘POV’ which means ‘Point of View.’ Keeping in mind that history is shaped by those who write it, I steered clear of what I already knew about American history, and looked more closely at actual testaments from people that went through what I call, ‘America’s Greatest Sin.’ This sin per se is an overarching failure of the United States to provide substantial foundations for its people to succeed, and consequently, I looked up topics that perfectly represented this. The first being, women’s right to vote. The second, the Great Depression. These generalizations have one thing in common, the suppression of peoples. This prompted me to come up with my own quote, “When you don’t have a say in anything, you are in bondage.” With that being said, there is no ample opportunity for ‘Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness’ when you don’t have your voice heard, when you are silenced, and ignored. The Pursuit of Happiness is contradicted by the United States and as you will see regular citizens lack of dignity and respect for the fellow human in the past. 

After searching for “POV: Women's Right to Vote,” “POV: Great Depression” ... etc, I had to do a bit of digging to find things that worked and made sense for this topic. Originally, I had multiple sources from multiple different time periods but I found this to be far too expansive. Later, I narrowed it down to separate articles, my primary source being, “POV: What the Battle for Women’s Suffrage Tells Us about #MeToo 100 Years Later” by Sydney Pickering and Aarthi Gopalan, and my secondary source being, “Firsthand Accounts of the Great Depression” by Studs Terkel. My findings were, to say the least, depressing. I wanted to find areas in history where I could really feel what others felt, and I managed to do that. Both articles provided ample evidence, explanation, and testimony to really drive home the argument I wanted to make. The main thing I took into consideration was who was saying what and why were they saying it. What stance did they have in their explanation and argument, and why was it important to them, and why did they want to make it clear to others? I asked myself a bunch of conscious questions while researching but these were the most important. 

Most of the contradictions of the pursuit of happiness solely rested on societal standards and religious beliefs, and the ‘status quo.’ The article, “POV: What the Battle for Women’s Suffrage Tells Us about #MeToo 100 Years Later,” goes into this topic briefly. The article is quite expansive but doesn’t make a real point of its existence other than exposing gender and racial disparity, however, it provides a specific perspective through the eyes of women. It talks about the disparities amongst women, and more specifically, the disparities amongst women of different races, which is important to note because that is something I had never really thought about. The US, in the past, and arguably today, was a patriarchal society. This quote, however biased, provides a statement of how society was and perceived women’s struggle to get out of bondage and be heard, “A century back, women’s suffrage faced decades of intense opposition. Anti-suffragists argued voting would impede women’s role as caretaker of the household and was against God’s will. Cartoons of the time portrayed suffragists as old, cranky, unmarried women who had only joined the movement after their failed attempts to find a husband.” (Pickering, Gopalan 2020) How can a woman have “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” when she is not able to choose her role in society and instead be a ‘caretaker’ and have the threat of ‘God’s will’ being done if she denies this role? The answer is, she cannot. The idea of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” fell short, and ended up representing the exact opposite of that very same statement in this case. But, with almost all things, so did the Women's Rights Movement. “The women’s suffrage movement attacked the patriarchal structures of American society, and yet the movement fell short of calling for the rights of all women to vote,” moreover, “The suffragettes won white women the right to vote, and actively excluded native, Black, and Asian-American women.” (Pickering, Gopalan 2020) Double whammy, that just goes to show that not every movement is perfect, and everyone has an agenda. The white woman earned “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness,” but left all other women in the despair that they themselves wanted out of. 

The Great Depression is an interesting topic. And a vast one, to say the least. Finding the article, I found was easy, but reading it was a lot more difficult. It was first-hand accounts of people's personal experiences of living during the Great Depression. The part of the article that shocked me the most had nothing to do with the US government’s failures and had everything to do with the self-interests of regular citizens! Everyone was struggling and this led to very upsetting occurrences. The article gives first-hand accounts of three people, Virginia Durr, Eileen Barth, and Emma Tiller. They all talk about specific events that took place during their struggles with the Great Depression. All are unsettling, and to be honest, made me fearful of something like that ever happening again. But the first-hand account that really got to me was Emma Tillers. In 1929, she was a sharecropper, and even before the Great Depression, she was poor. On top of that, she was black. As we all know from our readings this semester, black people were often given a bad hand of cards. And in this case, she wasn’t the only one that was affected by the malicious misusage of resources by her town, so were white people. This is a direct quote from her in an interview with Studs Terkel, “In 1934, in this Texas town, the farmers were all out of food. The government gave us a slip, where you could pick up food.” “We would stand all day and wait and wait and wait. And get nothin’ or if you did, it was spoiled meat.” “The Government sent two men out there to find out why the trouble. They found out this man and a couple others had rented a huge warehouse and was stackin’ that food and sellin’ it. The food that was supposed to be issued to these people.” (Terkel) All that I could say after reading it was ‘wow.’ “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” was stolen from people in a small town, not due to the government, but due to the actions of ordinary citizens. Luckily, the men were arrested for hoarding and selling the food, but people still starved. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t feel happy if I was hungry, especially to the point where I could die if I didn’t eat something. United States’ own ordinary citizens depriving other citizens of the very thing they need to survive, food. This is by far the closest contradiction of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness,” and it was all encompassed in greed. 

There was a lot I learned about my topic. Firstly, I had a total of four sources before I began typing and quickly realized that was way too much! My topic is far too broad and honestly, I could type 15 more pages about it, but that is outside the parameters of the assignment. On top of that, I don’t think anyone would want to read that much. I learned more about what I already knew, but also gained some new insight. Before reading “POV: What the Battle for Women’s Suffrage Tells Us about #MeToo 100 Years Later,” I had no idea that women of color were more likely to be sexually harassed or assaulted. That is a recent thing! The connection was made when it talked about how only white women gained the right to vote out of the movement. That was an eye-opener to me. Although, the rest of the article did tear down white men and their masculinity, so you give and you take you know? I did state it was biased, but it's okay, my feelings aren't hurt. I'm glad my research topic didn’t change at all during the writing process, that would have meant that I lacked a vision for this paper, which I obviously didn’t or maybe I did, let me know what you guys think! 

What I can say from all this is, “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” is subjective. And it means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, but we cannot deny having one's voice silenced just because of their gender and the disallow of a necessity, such as food, to people who are starving isn't just unethical, it’s wrong. As I have talked about history and as we have read about history during our time in this class, I hope all of you can see not everyone can be happy all of the time. It may be because of their color, it may be because of their sex, it may be because of their religion, but that is neither here nor there. The point is, “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” has failed to be all-encompassing and present at all times. Women faced opposition, just because they wanted to be heard. Emma Barth along with her entire town was denied food, simply because some guys wanted to make money during the Great Depression. No one can be truly happy if their needs are not met, maybe that is why it is called ‘the pursuit of happiness.’ It is possible that you never really get there. Perhaps, this is why they worded it that way? I’m just speculating, but here is the problem. As stated in the first paragraph, the Declaration of Independence was written in 1776. Why in 2020 is there still a women’s rights movement? And why in 2020 are black Americans and white Americans still living in poverty? In my opinion, “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” does not apply to all, you are deprived of life when you are not allowed food, you are deprived of liberty when you are oppressed and treated like less, and you are deprived of the pursuit of happiness when the world around you gives you every reason to not be happy. 

I hope you all enjoyed reading my research paper, I had fun making it! Thank you, everyone! 

Works Cited 

Aarthi Gopalan, Sydney Pickering. "POV: What the Battle for Women’s Suffrage Tells Us About #MeToo 100 Years Later." Boston University, 13 Aug. 2020, www.bu.edu/articles/2020/pov-as-we-mark-the-centennial-of-the-19th-amendment-one-question-looms-2/. 

Terkel, Studs. "Firsthand Accounts of the Great Depression." Facing History and Ourselves, www.facinghistory.org/mockingbird/firsthand-accounts-great-depression.