LAD #16: "What to the Slave is the 4th of July?"

      Contrasting the celebrations of the 4th of July, Frederick Douglass asks a sobering question. As people celebrate the birth of our nation he wonders whether or not the quintessential rights listed in the Declaration of Independence apply to slaves and African-Americans. The jubilee that comes with independence is not shared with the slaves and blacks, and as a result both races seem to grow distant. "The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you, not by [him]." This resentment felt by the slaves and free blacks hurt was born from the United States shameful past. A past where slaves were beaten an bloodied and the ideas of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence are trample on. They lived in the land of the free and the home of the brave, and yet only a select few enjoyed freedom. Blacks were void of rights and cast down as inferior, but then Douglass asserts that blacks and whites are equal. While the slaves were working in the fields they were not only cultivating cotton but minds, as there were lawyers, teachers, poets, and Christians among them. They were "engaged in all manner of enterprises common to other men," and believed that their equality logically would follow. As Douglass is nearing the end of his speech, and about to prove his point. The 4th of July is not a celebration but a sham. The independence Americans claim is not real, and is in fact the largest hypocrisy on Earth where horrible atrocities have been committed against a race that was only asking for equality.