"What To The Slave Is The 4th Of
July?" FREDERICK DOUGLASS SPEECH, 1852
Independence Day Speech at
Rochester, 1852
Frederick Douglass (A former slave
himself, he
became a leader in the 19th Century Abolitionist Movement)
This speech is below, courtesy of The
Freeman Institute™.
An Open
Invitation to Participate in -- "THE
MOMENT" -- Dr. Freeman's Latest Book Project
*******************************************
---
O P T I O N S ---
1. All-Day "Diversity Seminar" Program --
Click Here
2. "Diversity Day" Presentation or Keynote Address --
Click Here
3. "Black History" Presentation --
Click Here
4. Dr. Freeman's African American History Collection --
Click Here 5. Preview Online Diversity Course --
Click Here
Flash Player needed to Preview Courses -- Download
Flash 6. Critical Incident Debriefing --
Click Here 7. Symbols that Address Cultural Awareness --
Click Here
Fellow citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I
called upon to speak here today? What have I, or those I
represent, to do with your national independence? Are the
great principles of political freedom and of natural
justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence,
extended to us? and am I, therefore, called upon to bring
our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess
the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings
resulting from your independence to us?
Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an
affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these
questions! Then would my task be light, and my burden easy
and delightful. For who is there so cold that a nation's
sympathy could not warm him? Who so obdurate and dead to the
claims of gratitude that would not thankfully acknowledge
such priceless benefits? Who so stolid and selfish that
would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a
nation's jubilee, when the chains of servitude had been torn
from his limbs? I am not that man. In a case like that the
dumb might eloquently speak and the "lame man leap as
an hart."
But such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad
sense of the disparity between us. 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 light
and healing to you has brought stripes and death to me. This
Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must
mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated
temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous
anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you
mean, citizens, to mock me by asking me to speak today? If
so, there is a parallel to your conduct. And let me warn
that it is dangerous to copy the example of nation whose
crimes, towering up to heaven, were thrown down by the
breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrevocable
ruin! I can today take up the plaintive lament of a peeled
and woe-smitten people.
"By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Yea! We
wept when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the
willows in the midst thereof. For there, they that carried
us away captive, required of us a song; and they who wasted
us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of
Zion. How can we sing the Lord's song in a strange land? If
I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her
cunning. If do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to
the roof of my mouth."
Fellow citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear
the mournful wail of millions! Whose chains, heavy and
grievous yesterday, are, today, rendered more intolerable by
the jubilee shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do
not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorry
this day, "may my right hand cleave to the roof of my
mouth"! To forget them, to pass lightly over their
wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme would be
treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a
reproach before God and the world. My subject, then, fellow
citizens, is American slavery. I shall see this day and its
popular characteristics from the slave's point of view.
Standing there identified with the American bondman, making
his wrongs mine. I do not hesitate to declare with all my
soul that the character and conduct of this nation never
looked blacker to me than on this Fourth of July! Whether we
turn to the declarations of the past or to the professions
of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally
hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false
to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to
the future. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding
slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity
which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered,
in the name of the Constitution and the Bible which are
disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and
to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything
that serves to perpetuate slavery-the great sin and shame of
America! "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, shall not
confess to be right and just....
For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of
the Negro race. Is it not as astonishing that, while we are
plowing, planting, and reaping, using all kinds of
mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges,
building ships, working in metals of brass, iron, copper,
and secretaries, having among us lawyers doctors, ministers,
poets, authors, editors, orators, and teachers; and 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 hillside,
living, moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in
families as husbands, wives, and children, and above all,
confessing and worshiping the Christian's God, and looking
hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave, we are
called upon to prove that we are men!...
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 burn their flesh, to starve them into
obedience and submission to their masters? Must I argue that
a system thus marked with blood, and stained with pollution,
is wrong? No! I will not. I have better employment for my
time and strength than such arguments would imply....
What, to the American slave, is your Fourth 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
denunciation 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.
Own a full-size, 3D
Rosetta Stone replica
There is not 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.
Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all
the monarchies and despotisms- of the Old World, travel
through South America, search out every abuse, and when you
have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the
everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me
that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy,
America reigns without a rival.
Click here to learn more about this authentic Gullah
resource Gullah.tv
_____________________________________________
Earth At Night Image!
A F r
e d e r i c k D o u g l a s
s C h r o n o l o g y
The Life of Frederick Douglass
1818-1895
1818 -- (Exact date unknown) Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey is born on Holme Hill farm in Talbot County on the Eastern Shore of Maryland to Harriet Bailey, a slave. Frederick never knew his father but suspected him to be his owner, Captain Aaron Anthony.
1826 -- Sent to live with Hugh Auld family in Baltimore.
1827 -- Asks Sophia Auld to teach him his letters. Hugh Auld stops the lessons because he feels that learning makes slaves discontented and rebellious.
1834 -- Hired Out to Edward Covey, a "slave breaker", to break his spirit and make him accept slavery.
1836 -- Tries to escape from slavery, but his plot is discovered.
1836-38 -- Works in Baltimore shipyards as a caulker. Falls in love with Anna Murray, a free Negro (daughter of slaves).
1838 -- Escapes from slavery,
goes to New York City, marries Anna Murray and settles in New Bedford, Massachusetts; selects a new name: Frederick Douglass.
1839 -- Subscribes to William Garrison's The Liberator.
1841 -- First speaks at an antislavery meeting in Nantucket; William Lloyd Garrison hires him as a lecturer for the American Anti-Slavery Society; spends the next four years on the lecture
circuit speaking out against slavery and campaigning for rights of free Blacks.
1842 -- Makes first visit to Rochester attending a convention of Blacks.
1845 -- Publishes the first of three autobiographies,
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American
Slave; to escape recapture following publication, tours Great Britain as an antislavery speaker, visiting England, Scotland, and Ireland;
British friends and supporters purchase his freedom a year later for £150
from Hugh Auld, his former master.
1847 -- Returns to the United States as a free rnan. Against the advice of Garrison,
moves to Rochester, New York, to publish a weekly newspaper, the
North Star, which in later years becomes Frederick Douglass' Paper and finally
Douglass' Monthly.
1848 -- Attends the first Women's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New
York and advocates the right to vote for women.
1850 -- Publishes an attack on the Compromise of 1850 and the new fugitive-slave law.
1851 -- Changes the name of North Star to Frederick Douglass's Paper. Helps three fugitive Maryland slaves escape to Canada as "Station Master" of the Rochester terminus of the Underground Railroad.
1852 -- Splits with Garrison over the means to achieve the abolition of slavery. Chosen vice-presidential candidate at the Liberal Party convention.
1855 -- Publishes his second autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom.
1858 -- John Brown stays at the Douglass home in Rochester while developing plans for encouraging a slave revolt.
1859 -- After assisting John Brown in drawing up plans to incite a slave revolt, Douglass declines to join the raid on Harper's Ferry; escapes to Canada to avoid being arrested
and then sails to England to avoid prosecution, staying six months.
1860 -- Returns to the United States upon hearing of the death of his eleven-year old daughter,
Annie and is not charged in the John Brown raid.
1861 -- The Civil War begins. Calls for the use of Black troops to fight the Confederacy through the establishment of Negro regiments in the Union Army.
November: Abraham Lincoln is elected president. December: South Carolina secedes from the Union.
1862 -- Congress abolishes slavery in Washington, D.C.
1863 -- Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation takes effect, abolishing slavery in the states that are "in rebellion." Douglass becomes a recruiter for the 54th Massachusetts Infantry, the first regiment of African-American soldiers; his sons Lewis and Charles join the regiment. Eventually his son Frederick Douglass Jr. becomes an army recruiter also. Meets with President Lincoln to discuss the unequal pay and poor treatment black soldiers receive.
About 180,000 African Americans serve in the Civil War on the Union side.
1864 -- Meets with Lincoln again. In case the war is not a total Union victory, Lincoln asks Douglass to prepare an effort to assist slaves escaping to the North.
1865 -- April 14, Lincoln is assassinated.
The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, outlawing slavery, is ratified.
1866 -- Attends convention of Equal Rights Association and clashes with women's rights leaders over their insistence that the vote not be extended to Black men unless it is given to all women at the same time.
1867 -- Turns down President Andrew Johnson's offer to name him commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau inasmuch as the National Black Leadership supported General Oliver O. Howard's continuation in the post.
1870 -- Becomes owner and editor of
the New National Era, a weekly newspaper in Washington, D.C.
1871 -- President Ulysses S. Grant appoints Douglass
to the Commission of Inquiry into the possible annexation of Santo
Domingo.
1872 -- Rochester home
mysteriously destroyed by fire (arson?) with the loss of the newspaper archives. Moves his family to Washington, DC. Nominated for vice-president by Equal Rights Party on a ticket headed by Victoria
Woodhull.
1874 -- Named president
of the troubled Freedmen's Savings and Trust
Company. Works with the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee to save the bank, which ultimately fails.
1875 -- Congress passes a Civil Rights Act prohibiting discrimination in public places.
1877 -- Appointed U.S. Marshal for the District of Columbia by President Rutherford B. Hayes.
1878 -- Purchases Cedar Hill, a 9-acre estate in the Anacostia section of
Washington, DC.
1881 -- President James A. Garfield appoints Douglass recorder of deeds for the District of Columbia; publishes his third autobiography,
Life and Times of Frederick Douglass.
1882 -- Anna Murray Douglass dies. Abolitionist
1813-1882
Because of her husband, Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey's prominent place in American Black History, it is easy to see how Anna Murray could easily be over shadowed. However, because of her tremendous courage, loyalty, love, and support for Bailey, she too has secured a place in history. It was through Murray's financial efforts that Bailey was able to escape from Baltimore to New York disguised as a sailor. Upon his safe arrival, she joined him, and the two were married. They assumed the name 'Johnson', but after meeting Nathan Johnson of New Bedford, Mass., he formally introduced the new couple as Mr. and Mrs. Frederick Douglass. While Frederick traveled, Anna provided comfort and shelter to hundreds of runaway slaves at their Rochester, New York home, which served as a station on the Underground Railroad. Although illiterate, she was the family's financial manager and maintained rock solid stability during Frederick's absence. Stricken with paralysis, Anna Murray Douglass, a devoted wife and mother of four, died in their Washington D.C. home in 1882.
1884 -- Having been a widower since 1882, Douglass marries Helen Pitts, his former secretary.
1889-91 -- Serves as minister and consul to Haiti, appointed by President Benjamin Harrison.
1891 -- Revises and then republishes
Life and Times autobiography.
1892-93 --
Appointed Charge d'Affaires for Santo Domingo and Minister Resident and Consul- General to Haiti.
Leads Haitian legation to World's Columbian Exposition.
1895 -- Dies at his home (Cedar
Hill) of a heart attack.
12
Principles For Success Mentioned in Writings by Frederick
Douglass By Fred Morsell
1. Understanding that the proper use of power is to help others.
2. Giving up something you want in order to help someone else.
3. Learning how to challenge and overcome doubt.
4. Understanding why and how to control the human ego.
5. Doing what is right and proper without delay, even if no one is looking.
6. Learning how to use knowledge and understanding wisely.
7. Overcoming indecisiveness by developing proper organizational skills.
8. Making gratitude a part of every thought and action.
9. Practicing the skill of listening before making judgments.
10. Remaining true to your word.
11. Practicing the art of giving without expecting something in return.
12. Recognizing that success is as much a motivation to others as to you.
-- 12 Principles For Success,
Copyright,
Fred Morsell, President of Fremarjo Enterprises, Inc.
Check
out the Cultural Diversity Links Native
American Indians Latinos /
Chicanos / Hispanics Asians and Asian Americans African
Americans European Americans Multiracial and
Inter-racial
