The Fourth
Frederick Douglass between 1865 and 1880. Courtesy Brady-Handy photograph collection, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
“I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. — The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. ”
It has now been 243 years since American colonists rallied behind an Englishman’s idea of fundamental rights. These convictions bannered out behind them in now-iconic and proud red, white and blue. Much like the ideas were stolen and won by American rebels, so is the very concept of American Independence now questionable in its authenticity. In Frederick Douglas’s speech What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?, delivered on July 5, 1852, at Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York, addressing the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society, he said with scorching irony the constitutional rights scrawled across our most revered document are an offense to the enslaved population of the United States. He claimed “the conscience of the nation must be roused...and the hypocrisy [of the nation] must be exposed.”
“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.”
The Fourth of July still carries with it hidden offenses to minorities, especially black Americans. Amidst all that has happened across our country in these past few months, we must address, like Douglas, and with biting ridicule, that we are a nation who has failed to realize we are not living up to our proclaimed beliefs: liberty and freedom. There is no doubt during these extended weekend celebrations, many Americans will continue to blissfully light barbecues, sip at wine coolers, and gazing dutifully at those bursts of iconic colors, whilst denying the country is built on “inconsistencies and hypocrisies” that have been overlooked for so long they now appear to be truths.
