" What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, morethan 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.
Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival."
Frederick Douglass
July 1852
A Great Speech by Frederick Douglass.
July 4th is a celebration and signing of the Declaration of Independence for the Colonist, not the slave because we were still considered property. I thank God for abolishing slavery through the help of wonderful abolitionist and ex slaves, as well as all those who fought and lost their lives in the civil war, and today I don't celebrate the signing of a hypocritical document of Independence, but today I think of the sacrifice of such great men and women (both black and white) who dedicated thier lives to end the peculiar institution of slavery so that all men could be truly free !
I really enjoyed reading this speech by brother Douglass, he was a great orator, and he spoke with boldness and conviction !!!
Read full speech by clicking the link http://www.redandgreen.org/July_5th_Speech.htm
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