This is hidden brain.
I'm Shankar Vedantam.
All nations at the stroke of the midnight hour are built on stories.
India will awake to life and freedom.
In Suenyo Sakuba, there are stories about ideals, the values around which a people stake their identity.
We shall fight on the beaches.
We shall fight on the landing grounds.
Mates helping mates.
That's what it means to be australian.
Often these stories contain contradictions, some so profoundly that most of us simply look the other way.
The United States has its own set of founding myths and its own set of contradictions.
One of the most striking unfolded in 1776 at a house on the southwest corner of 7th and Market streets in Philadelphia.
That summer, 33 year old Thomas Jefferson rented rooms at this house.
While he was there, he wrote the document that would formalize America's split from Britain, the Declaration of Independence.
It says, we hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are.
Created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that.
Among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
And the pursuit of happiness.
And yet, even as he was writing these inspiring words, that to secure these rights, Jefferson was attended on by a slave.
He was a 14 year old boy named Robert Hemings.