Frederick Douglas: “WHAT TO THE AMERICAN SLAVE IS YOUR 4TH OF JULY?” (July 5, 1852)

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July 4: CELEBRATING A “SLAVEHOLDER’S REPUBLIC”

Modern histories of the American Revolution rightly emphasize the interests of slaveholders and land speculators hungry to overthrow Britain’s limits to westward expansion into Native lands.  The colonial leaders debated publicly what sort or government they wanted, but they were unanimous in rejecting “Democracy,” a word which appears nowhere in the Declaration of Independence or the US Constitution.

Frederick Douglas:

“WHAT TO THE AMERICAN SLAVE IS YOUR 4TH OF JULY?” (July 5, 1852)

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 sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, 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 these United States, at this very hour. (Full text here)

James Earl Jones Reads Frederick Douglass’s Historic Speech

Click on the image above to watch and listen!