Too bad the Jesse, Al and the other race hustlers don’t read this and take it to heart. But then they’d be out of the race-hate game
A giant among men and one of the most blessed orators whose speeches were ever recorded.
There goes Frederick, acting all white again.
Few recall that the very slavery he speaks of was legal and normal under British rule. It took two revolutions to depose of it.
I think I found a new tag line.
For the tl/dr crowd, here's the money paragraph:
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; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, 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 these United States, at this very hour.
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Ping for later.
“The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro”
PBS Africans in America Web site | 1852 | Frederick Douglass
Posted on 07/03/2003 5:16:46 PM PDT by ArcLight
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/940163/posts
I don’t have time to read the whole speech right now, so forgive me if I have missed something relevant to this comment.
The idea of a Black abolitionist addressing a Fourth of July celebration is slightly comical.
From 1776-1782, the British Army promised emancipation to any American slave who joined the British Army.
The Brits kept their word, even after they lost. They transported all former slaves by ship to British controlled Canada.
If one were to skim that speech quickly, and not recognize its author or context ...
One might be forgiven for thinking, at times, that it addressed the abject horror of legalized abortion.