By Bishop Dwayne Royster
In a recent interview with 60 Minutes, famed artist Amy Sherald spoke about her newly launched exhibit, noting that there’s no one more patriotic than Black folks. When I think about patriotism, my mind does not go first to fireworks or flag-waving. My definition of patriotism is rooted in something deeper: loving a country enough not to be satisfied with it as it is, but calling it to become its better self. That vision of patriotism is part of my family’s DNA. Black patriotism that Ms. Sherald spoke of is not the passive “love it or leave it” stance. It is the active refusal to let America off the hook. It is the faith that this nation can be better—and the willingness to push it there.
My two-times great-grandfather, 1st Sgt. Edward Ratcliff fought for this country as a member of Company C, 38th United States Colored Troops (USCT) during the Civil War. On September 29, 1864, at the Battle of New Market Heights—when his commanding officer was killed—he took command of his company and led them forward, becoming the first enlisted man to breach the enemy’s works. He was awarded the Medal of Honor on April 6, 1865. After the war, he rose to the rank of Sergeant Major before mustering out in January 1867.
Ratcliff’s story is rooted in a community known as “The Reservation”—a thriving Black settlement in York County, Virginia, founded by free and formerly enslaved people who built farms, oyster fisheries, churches, and schools along the York River. In 1918, the U.S. government invoked eminent domain to create what is now the Naval Weapons Station Yorktown, seizing the land and displacing hundreds of Black families, including many who traced their roots back to the Civil War and Reconstruction. Families like mine were forced to uproot and rebuild in nearby communities such as Grove, Virginia. So when I talk about patriotism, I’m drawing from a history of service, displacement, resilience, and rebuilding.
The roll call of Black patriots is long and luminous:
- Fannie Lou Hamer declared that “nobody’s free until everybody’s free,” rejecting a half-democracy.
- Mary McLeod Bethune built schools and institutions as acts of nation-building.
- Ella Baker organized democracy from the grassroots.
- Rep. John Lewis shed blood on an Alabama bridge because he believed the country could rise above its worst.
- Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of the “fierce urgency of now,” calling America to live up to its creed.
These leaders—and my ancestor—understood something essential: patriotism is not blind loyalty. It is not silence when injustice calls. It is courageous love—the kind that tells the truth, demands change even when it costs.
After the war, Ratcliff returned to the Reservation community and farmed the land alongside his wife, Grace and their children. The people of that community believed freedom meant more than emancipation; it meant ownership, education, and self-determination. When the Navy came in 1918, it was Black farmers, clergy, and community leaders—including John “Tack” Roberts, another family ancestor—who organized to demand fairer compensation and dignity in the face of displacement. That, too, is patriotism: standing one’s ground for justice, even when the law stands against you.
The contradiction of this country is painful: Ratcliff fought beneath a flag that did not yet guarantee his full rights; Black residents of the Reservation were uprooted by their own government in the name of national defense. Yet the blessing is that Black patriots have always been the oxygen of American democracy, breathing life into words that would otherwise suffocate.
I am proud to be Black. I am proud to be a patriot in this tradition. My ancestors did not settle for the America they inherited—they offered it their labor, leadership, and vision, and then demanded it rise. My patriotism is of that same stock: not nostalgia for an imagined past, but faith in a better future. It is standing in that river of history flowing from Sgt. Ratcliff and the Reservation community, through Hamer, Bethune, Baker, Lewis, and King, and carrying their vision forward.
To love America as a Black patriot is to dream its truest dreams, to wrestle its deepest demons, and to believe—still—that she can be redeemed. That is the inheritance I carry. That is the patriotism I practice.
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Bishop Dwayne Royster is the executive director of Faith in Action, the largest U.S. and global faith-based grassroots organizing network. He previously served as the executive director of POWER Interfaith in Pennsylvania, a federation of Faith in Action, and has pastored Black congregations in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.
