Four For the Fourth 2020 Part III: Speaking of Frederick Douglass On This Day

Mentioned in Part II how the DC statehood movement would rename District of Columbia to Douglass Commonwealth, we need to look back at what Frederick Douglass the man said about the 4th of July.

"What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July" is one of those documents that deserve teaching in schools, recited on holidays, remembered for its impact in spelling out how "freedom to all" didn't really apply to all and that a debt is still owed. The entire speech is available for reading at the Teaching American History website, but the prominent part, the one everyone quotes, is down towards the end of the speech:

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 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, 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...

Douglass proceeded to spell out the injustices and inequities that the system of slavery continued since 1776. He denounced the then-recently passed Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 which essentially opened hunting season on freed Blacks by southern bounty hunters. He condemned the religious hypocrisy - some of which perpetuates to this very day - that allowed so-called Christians to turn away from the cruelty of the slave trade, the beatings and rapes, and other abuses.

We keep seeing these abuses in the police brutality directed towards Black communities. We keep seeing the violations of voting rights as state after state reduces polling places in Black communities. We keep seeing the demonization and criminalization of Black communities by those in power seeking to retain such power in defiance of human liberty.

Today is supposed to be a Day of Independence for all people, for Americans and freedom-seeking men and women everywhere.

We're still not at a place we can guarantee that independence to our own.

That debt is still owed.