The arm of the Lord is not shortened, and the doom of slavery is certain. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! The crack you heard, was the sound of the slave-whip; the scream you heard, was from the woman you saw with the babe. The far off and almost fabulous Pacific rolls in grandeur at our feet. When the dogs in your streets, when the fowls of the air, when the cattle on your hills, when the fish of the sea, and the reptiles that crawl, shall be unable to distinguish the slave from a brute, then will I argue with you that the slave is a man!For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. [12], According to the 1850 Census, there were around 3.2 million enslaved persons in the United States. Then would my task be light, and my burden easy and delightful. There is blasphemy in the thought. It destroys your moral power abroad; it corrupts your politicians at home. One of the biggest challenges we face in our present moment is building sustainable movements that fundamentally change peoples minds about race and racism. They strip the love of God of its beauty, and leave the throng of religion a huge, horrible, repulsive form. But the 1852 "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" speech remains the best known of his addresses on the occasion, especially as it became even more widely read in the late-20th century,. If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. On July 5, 1852, in . Your lawmakers have commanded all good citizens to engage in this hellish sport. It is not that pure and undefiled religion which is from above, and which is first pure, then peaceable, easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy. But a religion which favors the rich against the poor; which exalts the proud above the humble; which divides mankind into two classes, tyrants and slaves; which says to the man in chains, stay there; and to the oppressor, oppress on; it is a religion which may be professed and enjoyed by all the robbers and enslavers of mankind; it makes God a respecter of persons, denies his fatherhood of the race, and tramples in the dust the great truth of the brotherhood of man. In the end, Douglass wants to keep his hope and faith in humanity high. [5], A statue of Douglass erected in Rochester in 2018 was torn down on July 5, 2020the 168th anniversary of the speech. 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. He implored the Rochester, N.Y., audience to think about the ongoing oppression of Black Americans during a holiday celebrating . In an 1868 speech, he said, No man should be excluded from the government on the basis of his color, no woman on account of her sex. To do so, would be to make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your understanding.There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven, that does not know that slavery is wrong for him.What, am I to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant of their relations to their fellow men, to beat them with sticks, to flay their flesh with the lash, to load their limbs with irons, to hunt them with dogs, to sell them at auction, to sunder their families, to knock out their teeth, to bum their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters? Wind, steam, and lightning are its chartered agents. How can we sing the Lords song in a strange land? be warned! When a child, my soul was often pierced with a sense of its horrors. whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. Is slavery among them? The cause of liberty may be stabbed by the men who glory in the deeds of your fathers. The sin of which it is guilty is one of omission as well as of commission. [17] This act drew the ire of the abolitionist movement,[9] and was directly criticized by Douglass in his speech. 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. But now is the time, the important time. There are forces in operation, which must inevitably work The downfall of slavery. The audience must fulfill what the founders of the country advocated. You profess to believe that, of one blood, God made all nations of men to dwell on the face of all the earth, and hath commanded all men, everywhere to love one another; yet you notoriously hate, (and glory in your hatred), all men whose skins are not colored like your own. What to the American slave is your Fourth of July? You know what is a swine-drover? Panel on dispossession of African Americans says burying truth keeps Black Americans dispossessed, Legal scholar and historian puts the push to remove Confederate statues in context, Members of the community share memories, plans, hopes for the holiday, Quantum computing simulation reveals possible wormhole-like dynamics. While drawing encouragement from the Declaration of Independence, the great principles it contains, and the genius of American Institutions, my spirit is also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age. Easel Activity. I will not equivocate; I will not excuse; I will use the severest language I can command; and yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart a slaveholder, shall not confess to be right and just.But I fancy I hear some one of my audience say, it is just in this circumstance that you and your brother abolitionists fail to make a favorable impression on the public mind. You may rejoice, I must mourn. There I see the tenderest ties ruthlessly broken, to gratify the lust, caprice and rapacity of the buyers and sellers of men. The country can progress like it has before, transforming from being a colony of a far-away king to an independent nation. It is the antagonistic force in your government, the only thing that seriously disturbs and endangers your Union. In speaking of the American church, however, let it be distinctly understood that I mean the great mass of the religious organizations of our land. You can bare your bosom to the storm of British artillery to throw off a threepenny tax on tea; and yet wring the last hard-earned farthing from the grasp of the black laborers of your country. The inaugural meeting between six women took place in Corinthian Hall on August 20. They inhabit all our Southern States. It is a religion for oppressors, tyrants, man-stealers, and thugs. Is it not astonishing that, while we are ploughing, planting and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron, copper, silver and gold; that, while we are reading, writing and cyphering, acting as clerks, merchants and secretaries, having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators and teachers; that, while we are engaged in all manner of enterprises common to other men, digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hill-side, living, moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives and children, and, above all, confessing and worshipping the Christians God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave, we are called upon to prove that we are men! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. But we also need to invest as a city and as a society into reading and learning more about the present realities of oppressed peoples. My subject, then fellow-citizens, is AMERICAN SLAVERY. $ 3.60. You are all on fire at the mention of liberty for France or for Ireland; but are as cold as an iceberg at the thought of liberty for the enslaved of America. 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. [Throughout the speech] Douglass looks at the contradictions between the reality of slavery and the lofty claims of a just society outlined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The speech 'What to the Slaves is the Fourth of July' projected the American Day of Independence from a slave's point of view and brought to light the horrific experiences of slavery. The oath of any two villains is sufficient, under this hell-black enactment, to send the most pious and exemplary black man into the remorseless jaws of slavery! He argues that the Constitution does not permit slavery, contrary to the claims of contemporary defenders of the institution. The founding fathers left black people and women out of these rights for "everyone." "Meaning of the Fourth of July to a Negro" by Bridget Durham The Fourth of July is a day of celebration for many Americans because on July 4th, 1776, America declared independence from Britain and said that everyone was free under the US government, right? The occasion was the Society's Fourth of July celebration, but Douglass refused to give the speech on July 4; he would not celebrate the holiday so long as African Americans remained enslaved. As with rivers so with nations. There should be no shoulder that does not bear the burden of the government. He had a prophetic vision for the future that he was always trying to work toward. [10] Douglass had spoken at Corinthian Hall in the past. For black men there are neither law, justice, humanity, not religion. O! It was fashionable, hundreds of years ago, for the children of Jacob to boast, we have Abraham to our father, when they had long lost Abrahams faith and spirit. The 4th of July Address, delivered in Corinthian Hall, by Frederick Douglass, is published on good paper, and makes a neat pamphlet of forty pages. ROY: The event that were doing in Somerville puts pressure on whitewashed conceptions of the Fourth of July, as many people to this day still view it as a celebration of American food, fireworks, and freedom. that gash on her shoulder tells her to move on. Douglass vividly describes the conditions under which those enslaved are bought and sold; he says that they are treated as no more than animals. 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