“We hold these truths to be self-evident: all people are created equal, endowed with unalienable Rights to Life, Liberty, the Pursuit of Happiness”

A portrait of the first public reading of these words in                            Massachusetts, July 18, 1776

The founders generally did  not believe them — SLAVERY

Most founders believed the words were about MEN — did not include “WOMEN”

The groups to whom these rights were unalienable were to be decided in “political” debates for centuries.

THOSE WORDS ARE AND ALWAYS WILL DEFINE THE  GREATNESS OF OUR NATION — Justice Cardozo said those words  “will extend themselves to the limits of their logic.”