"Give me liberty or give me death"

Less than a week after seeing him at the live recording of "Memory Wars" I had a second opportunity to hear Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Paul Williams (aka MPW) speak. To be honest, there are only a few local figures that I will go out of my way to listen to, but MPW is definitely on that list. This time he was giving a talk entitled "The Question Remains: Liberty or Death?" at St. John's Church as part of the Walter W. Craigie Speaker Series. For those who are not familiar, St. John's Church is the oldest church in Richmond (built in 1741). It also was the site of the Second Virginia Convention where Patrick Henry gave his famous "Give me liberty, or give me death" speech which MPW referred to as an "eighteen century mic drop".

Mic drop indeed, but what was the true meaning of this statement? Patrick Henry was arguing for freedom from oppression, despite owning slaves at the same time. In fact, at this time many references to 'rights' and 'freedom' did not apply to a large portion of the population. This formed the basis of a talk in which Mr. Williams brought the conversation to the modern day and the inequities that still persist.

I think it is important to place Patrick Henry's speech in this context because it shows how easy it is to get caught up in flashy rhetoric and miss hugely important details. It's a lot like a politician running on a platform of climate resiliency while taking massive donations from oil companies. In today's world major news stories are often reduced to sound clips. Our attention span is roughly the length of a TikTok video. It's more important than ever to apply critical thinking skills when processing media... including historical mic drops.