" 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...."
Frederick Douglas
July 5, 1852
Go ahead, enjoy the day. . . cherish the people you love. . . laugh and be happy. . . this really is quite an amazing and wonderful country in many ways, and it's alright to celebrate that fact, but just for a little while, just so that we can make it even better, consider this: Are we still shaking off the "hollow mockery," the "mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy?" What can we do to make it better and make it more free and more full of liberty?
Thanks Mac, for the Frederick Douglas quote.
3 comments:
sagacious: In my humble opinion, he was the greatest American leader of the 19th century.
Of the 19th Century; if not the greatest leader, the second greatest and certainly the greatest intellectual.
Interesting how a hugely disproportionate number of African-Americans have been the great social intellectuals of the past couple hundred years in America.
I knew when I was young thing that if I had been alive back then and had the chance to marry Frederick Douglass, I wouldn't have hesitated if he proposed. Sounds silly now, but that's how much I admired the man.
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