Dunn’s Civics > Black History > Crafting a Black Identity in the American Empire
Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass 1818 – 1895), social reformer, writer, statesman. After escaping from slavery as a teenager, he became a leader of the abolitionist movement, gaining note for his dazzling oratory and incisive antislavery writing.
Compare the Aims of Douglas in his essay on Reconstruction (see link below) with those of Madison in Federalist 10.
Frederick Douglass: July 4, 1852 Oration:
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 cruelly 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.
James Earl Jones reads excerpts from Frederick Douglass' speech "The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro" (July 5, 1852). --DemocracyNow: July 5, 2004. It is a dramatic reading from excerpts of Howard Zinn's "The People's History of the United States"