Frederick Douglass: “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro”

I am moved once again this year, as I do every year, to post several articles and videos related to the 4th of July with different perspectives and experiences than the ones we are acculturated into believing, celebrating, and not questioning. My hope is that more and more of us — especially those of us who are white Americans — will question, will chip away at our ignorance and indoctrination, will do the hard work of transforming our empathic impairment into ever growing consciousness, compassion, and caring for all human beings everywhere... and for all of life. 

 

Our ignorance has long been causing great harm, injustice, suffering, and death. It is time to no longer turn away from hard and painful truths. It is time to heal and transform our collective trauma. Because the suffering of any of one of us is also our suffering. Because we are all related, all family, all in this together. 

 

Bless us all. 

 No exceptions. — Molly

Frederick Douglass: “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro” (July 5, 1852)

“The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro,” a speech given by Frederick Douglass in Rochester, New York on July 5, 1852, is read by Danny Glover.

In this famous speech, Douglass says:

“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.” Read full speech here.

Excerpt from Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove’s book Voices of a People’s History of the United States. Reading by Glover on October 5, 2005 at the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center George and Sakaye Aratani Japan America Theatre, Los Angeles, California.

Also see a reading by James Earl Jones, introduced by Howard Zinn, in a segment on Democracy Now!

Please go here for the original:

https://www.zinnedproject.org/materials/frederick-douglass-meaning-july-fourth

 

Please go here for the website for Howard Zinn:

https://www.howardzinn.org/