Frederick Douglass “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”

“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… 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.”

Frederick Douglass wrote this speech, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?”, addressing the Rochester Ladies’ anti-slavery society on July 5th, 1852. Douglass was an American slave who later escaped and became a major part of the abolitionist movement. During his years of “freedom”, he was an orator who expressed the problems with slavery and pushed for its termination. Douglass compares the views of a white man on Independence Day to a black slave on independence day, expressing more deeply that the slave is more “victimized” than free. To a white man, it is the  freedom from having a foreign nation rule over him, but that same white man still has a slave that he controls. America’s independence day signifies the independence of the nation and those within. However, Douglass mentions that liberty, citizenship and independence is an insult to slaves because they do not receive those privileges. Because of the cruelty and suffering that slaves had to endure, they lacked the ability to be individuals; they were held in captivity with no way out, even on the day that was supposed to signify their freedom. He continues to say that there is no other nation besides America that will have slaves and still claim independence. This is because the majority of the other countries were enslaved by foreigners, so when they claimed independence, it was to sever ties with the superior nation. However, in America, even after the Europeans brought the slave here to work, the Americans should have abolished, but instead gained independence from Europe still having slavery. 

I chose to write about this quote because of the irony expressed throughout Douglass' speech. I did not realize that even when Americans gained their independence from the British rule in 1776, the black population was still enslavde. It was not until a century later, 1865, when slavery was abolished in the 13th amendment, so the idea of "Independence" was rather for the whites to be free of foreign rule and still enslave the blacks.