Frederick Douglass: “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro”
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Film clip. Frederick Douglass “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro” (1851) is read by Danny Glover. From Voices of a People’s History of the United States.
Frederick Douglass
“The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro,” a speech given by Frederick Douglass in Rochester, NY 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
