Isaiah Bradley is not just another version of Captain America. He is a fictional character whose story forces readers to wrestle with a painful question: What happens when a nation needs Black people to fight for its freedom, but refuses to fully treat Black people as free?

If we are going to honor America honestly, we have to tell the whole story. America’s history includes courage, vision, sacrifice, invention, opportunity and perseverance. It also includes slavery, stolen labor, segregation, discrimination, broken promises and people who had to fight for this nation to live up to the liberty it claimed from the beginning.