quote
What to the American slave is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to ...
Published
What to the American slave is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him more than all other days of 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 shouts of Liberty and equality, hallow mocked, your prayers and hymns your sermons and Thanksgivings with all your religious parade in solemnity are to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, a thin veil to cover up crimes, which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of the earth, guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour. Go 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.
— Frederick Douglass, "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July"? July 5, 1852