[News] 4TH OF JULY Message From Frederick Douglass

[News at freedomarchives.org]

The words of FREDERICK DOUGLASS, July 4, 1852:

   At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is 
needed. O! Had I the ability, and could I reach the nation's ear, I would, 
today pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, 
withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, 
but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the 
whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; 
the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation 
must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed: And its 
crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.

   What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that 
reveals to him, more than all the 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, brassfronted impudence. To the 
slave your shouts of liberty and equality are 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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           O, let America be America again
           The land that never has been yet
           And yet must be.

                 ---Langston Hughes





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