The American Creed PBS program and public engagement initiative gets its title from a phrase in Nobel Prize-winning economist Gunnar Myrdal’s An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (1944), a landmark study of American attitudes and beliefs during the Great Depression.
Myrdal wrote:
“Americans of all national origins, classes, regions, creeds, and colors, have something in common: a social ethos, a political creed. It is difficult to avoid the judgment that this ‘American Creed’ is the cement in the structure of this great and disparate nation.” Myrdal defined that creed as an abiding sense that every individual, regardless of circumstances, deserves fairness and the opportunity to realize unlimited potential.”
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King was among Myrdal’s most attentive readers. In his most famous speech, Dr. King said:
“…even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed…”
Like Myrdal, Dr. King placed the American creed at the center of an American dilemma. “When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.”
The American Creed documentary, and the accompanying public engagement campaign and education plan, are based on the premise that in every generation, a recommitment to that ‘promissory note’ is urgently needed.
Download an American Creed Reading List by David M. Kennedy.
Learn more about the American Creed documentary.
This post is part of the Students Respond to PBS American Creed collection.
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