This chapter discusses the contested place of the Declaration of Independence in black political thought. As a document that provided a rationale for American independence, the Declaration of Independence in its own way also provided one for black political equality in the United States. This tension between intention and interpretation has made the Declaration stubbornly immune from attack by black intellectuals, politicians, and movement leaders. With rare exception, the Declaration has been attacked mostly for its exclusivity, not its content or core ethos. Even Critical Race Theory’s (CRT) modest dissent from the Declaration has been limited in its ability to transform the persistence of black support for it, making arguments for CRT’s abandonment of America’s founding principles ring hollow. Instead, the history of black political thought from Frederick Douglass to W. E. B. Du Bois to Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, stands squarely on the side of the Declaration’s essential truths, while admonishing America’s enduring failure to live up to them.