I have never been big on the Fourth of July. Most years, I took great pleasure in reading the powerful Frederick Douglass speech, ” The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro.” Though delivered in 1852 during slavery, the words have rich meaning for me, even today.“What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July,” he thundered to a crowd in Rochester, N.Y. “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 shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery.”
The speech is a scathing indictment of U.S. hypocrisy. If you called me on July 4, I would probably read you some of its rich and powerful passages.
via usatoday.com
Just don’t question her patriotism, ok?