“What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sound of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants brass fronted impudence; your shout of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanks-givings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.”
— Frederick Douglass at Corinthian Hall, Rochester NY, on July 5, 1852.
Related:
“America’s real founding moment: Why we get Independence Day all wrong,” Elias Isquith, Salon
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Tags: 4th of July, abolitionists, American History, Fourth of July, Frederick Douglass, history, holidays, Independence Day, July 4th, oratory, slavery, speeches
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