But it is answered in reply to all this, that precisely what I have now denounced is, in fact, guaranteed and sanctioned by the Constitution of the United States; that the right to hold and to hunt slaves is a part of that Constitution framed by the illustrious Fathers of this Republic. They believed in order; but not in the order of tyranny. Somehow I often find myself reading this paragraph and Im always struck by its prescience. I have better employment for my time and strength than such arguments would imply. That point is conceded already. Now, there are certain rules of interpretation, for the proper understanding of all legal instruments. "The arm of the Lord is not shortened," and the doom of slavery is certain. With them, justice, liberty and humanity were final; not slavery and oppression. When the Ladies Anti-Slavery Society of Rochester, N.Y., invited Douglass to give a July 4 speech in 1852, Douglass opted to speak on July 5 instead. It fetters your progress; it is the enemy of improvement, the deadly foe of education; it fosters pride; it breeds insolence; it promotes vice; it shelters crime; it is a curse to the earth that supports it; and yet, you cling to it, as if it were the sheet anchor of all your hopes. 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. The fiat of the Almighty, "Let there be Light," has not yet spent its force. My business, if I have any here today, is with the present. Oppression makes a wise man mad. Why does he call his own time degenerate? To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, is inhuman mockery. Cling to this daycling to it, and to its principles, with the grasp of a storm-tossed mariner to a spar at midnight. Hed had a breakdown in the early 1850s, and was having trouble supporting his family. Douglass' 1845 autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, described his time as an enslaved worker in Maryland. What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? You may rejoice, I must mourn. One of the biggest challenges we face in our present moment is building sustainable movements that fundamentally change peoples minds about race and racism. I said then and throughout his presidency that rather than freeing us from talking about race, his election freed us to talk about it; and we entitled that first event: Reading Frederick Douglass in the Age of Obama.. The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. We would be well advised to ponder Douglasss speech as we frame this conversation. The country was in the midst of crises over fugitive slave rescues in the wake of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Knowledge was then confined and enjoyed by the privileged few, and the multitude walked on in mental darkness. The sunlight that brought light and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. 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. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. One person who felt that way was Douglass, the famous abolitionist, who was himself born into slavery. In the early 1850s, tensions over slavery were high across the county. Throughout this speech, as well as his life, Douglass advocated equal justice and rights, as well as citizenship, for blacks. He begins his speech by modestly apologizing for being nervous in front of the crowd and recognizes that he has come a long way since his escape from slavery. The manhood of the slave is conceded. ROY: Douglass wrote the speech in the wake of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which effectively extended the reach of slave power in the South throughout the rest of the country. 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. How unlike the politicians of an hour! Magazines, Digital It is a slander upon their memory, at least, so I believe. EDSITEment is a project of theNational Endowment for the Humanities, Uncle Toms Cabin: Or Life among the Lowly, From Courage to Freedom: Frederick Douglass's 1845 Autobiography. and am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us? Their solid manhood stands out the more as we contrast it with these degenerate times. In the late 1840s and into the 1850s, his finances were tight, and he was struggling to sustain the newspaper he founded, The North Star. Had I the ability, and could I reach the nations ear, I would, today, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. As with rivers so with nations. Uncle Toms Cabin had just been published that spring and was taking the country by storm. Given all that he has said in his speech, why does Douglass conclude on an optimistic note for black Americans. They were quiet men; but they did not shrink from agitating against oppression. The charter of our liberties, which every citizen has a personal interest in understanding thoroughly. Mark them! This Fourth July is yours, not mine. They were great men, too, great enough to give frame to a great age. Must we allow symbols of racism on public land? The time was when such could be done. that he is the rightful owner of his own body? Douglass repeatedly uses the pronouns you and your (rather than our and ours) throughout this section. Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. In a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak, and the 'lame man leap as an hart. Throughout this speech, as well as his life, Douglass advocated equal justice and rights, as well as citizenship, for blacks.He begins his speech by modestly apologizing for being nervous in front of the crowd and recognizes that he has come a long way since his escape from slavery. Oh! It carries your minds back to the day, and to the act of your great deliverance; and to the signs, and to the wonders, associated with that act, and that day. Although it has also facilitated the spread of hateful ideas and untruths, I suspect Douglass, who understood perhaps better than anyone in the 19th century the power of images, would have reveled in our ability to capture and convey video of events. "[L]et me ask, if it be not somewhat singular that, if the Constitution were intended to be, by its framers and adopters, a slave-holding instrument, why neither slavery, slaveholding, nor slave can anywhere be found in it.". America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. The audience of Douglass' message were abolitionists, who were white people from the north who did not own slaves and wanted to abolish slavery. I shall see this day and its popular characteristics from the slave's point of view," (52-54). A horrible reptile is coiled up in your nations bosom; the venomous creature is nursing at the tender breast of your youthful republic; for the love of God, tear away, and fling from you the hideous monster, and let the weight of twenty millions crush and destroy it forever! To man his plundered fights again Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. Is it at the gateway? Until that year, day, hour, arrive, This is the inevitable conclusion, and from it there is no escape. They were peace men; but they preferred revolution to peaceful submission to bondage. We feel the pain and anguish ever more severely and it is much harder to find hope for the future. Why do you think he delivered the speech on the 5th rather than the 4th of July? Their statesmanship looked beyond the passing moment, and stretched away in strength into the distant future. Do you think that section has any lessons for us today? 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. In Douglass' speech, his tone mainly appeals to emotions. The message of Frederick Douglasss 1852 speech on the contradiction of Americas just ideals and unjust realities endures. America, by its nature, is never quite fulfilling all of those promises.. They showed forbearance; but that they knew its limits. It seems that every year we have marked some anniversary with the reading, whether civil rights movement or Civil War related. It is the antagonistic force in your government, the only thing that seriously disturbs and endangers your Union. Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions! O! Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? Panel on dispossession of African Americans says burying truth keeps Black Americans dispossessed, Legal scholar and historian puts the push to remove Confederate statues in context, Members of the community share memories, plans, hopes for the holiday, Meredith Max Hodges and Geraldine Acua-Sunshine to assume leadership roles for 2023-24, We need individual events like reading Douglass, but we also need to be thinking about ways to extend this conversation over the long term., Happiness is not a destination Happiness is the way, Expanding our understanding of gut feelings, Gen Z, millennials need to be prepared to fight for change, What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?, Rewriting history to include all of it this time. Interview was lightly edited for clarity and length. Well, we have all come to understand that while on its face this amendment appeared to outlaw forever slavery and involuntary servitude, its exception for those serving a punishment for crime left open the door for what Douglas Blackmon has called Slavery by Another Name and Ana DuVernays so painfully rendered film, 13th, revealed as continued oppression in the 21st century. And let me warn you that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation whose crimes, towering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrevocable ruin! He would use the Fourth of July for its irony over and over and over, just like the Declaration of Independence is used to remind the country of its potential and promise, and to him, race was always the measure of that, he says. there is no matter in respect to which, the people of the North have allowed themselves to be so ruinously imposed upon, as that of the pro-slavery character of the Constitution. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? Why Frederick Douglass' famous 1852 anti-slavery speech is still read and still resonates in 2017. From what point of view does he look at it? Host called senior colleague a C-word in text message obtained by lawyers as part of Dominion lawsuit Tucker Carlson's firing from Fox News came after he used vulgar language to describe a . Paul Marcus, then the director of Community Change, and I contacted another colleague, David Tebaldi, then executive director of the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities (now MassHumanities) about sponsoring a public reading. Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners of the globe. This project began in the library of an organization called Community Change, which was founded by Horace Seldon in 1968 to address the white problem at the root of American inequality revealed by the Kerner Report. Now, take the constitution according to its plain reading, and I defy the presentation of a single pro-slavery clause in it. His friend Julia Griffith, the treasurer of the Rochester group that invited him to give the 1852 speech, was one of the people helping him fund-raise to keep the paper alive. Were the nation older, the patriots heart might be sadder, and the reformers brow heavier. The signers of the Declaration of Independence were brave men. Nations do not now stand in the same relation to each other that they did ages ago. You could instruct me in regard to them. Shall exercise a lordly power, and am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?, Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions! I will use the severest language I can command; and yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart a slaveholder, shall not confess to be right and just. I generally try to avoid speculating about current or historical figures I dont know. But, he said, speaking more than a decade before slavery was ended nationally, a lot of work still needed to be done so that all citizens can enjoy life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Above your national, tumultuous joy the July 4th celebrations of white Americans were the mournful wails of millions whose heavy chains are, today, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them.. This year we mark both the 400th anniversary of the arrival of captive Africans to the British colonies and the 65th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost. The above audio reading by actor Ossie Davis can be used alongside the full text of Frederick Douglass's speech delivered on July 5, 1852 at Corinthian Hall to the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society in Rochester, New York. (modern), Frederick Douglas addressing an English audience during his visit to London in 1846., Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America. Cambridge, MA 02138, 2022 The President and Fellows of Harvard College, International Legal Studies & Opportunities, Syllabi, Exam and Course Evaluation Archive, Sign Up for the Harvard Law Today Newsletter, Consumer Information (ABA Required Disclosures). If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth." This is a particularly difficult time for any such return, given the lack of civility and acceptance of intolerance that characterize our public discourse starting with the president. 2023 TIME USA, LLC. To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world. On July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass gave a keynote address at an Independence Day celebration and asked, What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? Douglass was a powerful orator, often traveling six months out of the year to give lectures on abolition. Wells, which was incorporated into the preface of her 1892 pamphlet Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases.. GAZETTE: Why is it important to do this kind of community-building work at a local level? But for me, the hope is in the very fact of gathering, of reading the speech in community, renewing the bonds with others who share a determination to change, and committing to act accordingly. We convened a group of interested parties, met a few times over a couple of months, and decided to launch an event on the Common. They were statesmen, patriots and heroes, and for the good they did, and the principles they contended for, I will unite with you to honor their memory.. These gentlemen have, as I think, fully and clearly vindicated the Constitution from any design to support slavery for an hour. Cling to this day cling to it, and to its principles, with the grasp of a storm-tossed mariner to a spar at midnight. Seventy-six years, though a good old age for a man, is but a mere speck in the life of a nation. The report is remembered for its conclusion that: Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one whiteseparate and unequal.. They that can, may; I cannot. She can speak not only to Douglass' historical importance but to the urgency and relevancy of his message in today's . The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced. Thoughts expressed on one side of the Atlantic are, distinctly heard on the other.. There is consolation in the thought that America is young. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the constitution and the Bible which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery the great sin and shame of America! On the Fourth of July, 1852, America celebrated its freedom, as it does every Independence Day. It is the birthday of your National Independence, and of your political freedom. speech was delivered on July 5, 1852 as an address to the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society in Rochester, New York. Douglass's purpose in writing his Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave was to provide a first-hand account of the horrors of slavery and thereby support the. The Fugitive Slave Act passed by Congress as part of this compromise was bitterly resented by the Northern states. Hisspeech, given at an event commemorating the signing of the Declaration of Independence, was held at Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York. In a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak, and the "lame man leap as an hart." No abuse, no outrage whether in taste, sport or avarice, can now hide itself from the all-pervading light. Sign up for daily emails to get the latest Harvardnews. It does not often happen to a nation to raise, at one time, such a number of truly great men. They are plain, common-sense rules, such as you and I, and all of us, can understand and apply, without having passed years in the study of law. The wide world oer They were peace men; but they preferred revolution to peaceful submission to bondage. He took action to raise the voices of others and to aid their work on the national stage, especially that of two Black women in the last half of the 19th century. All Rights Reserved. we wept when we remembered Zion. I am not included within the pale of glorious anniversary! In an 1868 speech, he said, No man should be excluded from the government on the basis of his color, no woman on account of her sex. Funny you should ask. The headings in brackets have been supplied by the editor to guide your reading as have the questions after each section. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day? In the second part of the speech, Douglass turns to the present and his own feelings about the 4th of July celebration. Each foe. I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I can to-day take up the plaintive lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people! Douglass praises and respects the signers of the Declaration of Independence, people who put the interests of a country above their own. Oh! He begins his speech by modestly apologizing for being nervous in front of the crowd and recognizes that he has come a long way since his escape from slavery. Read each part and answer the questions at the end of that part. That year will come, and freedoms reign, "Ethiopia shall stretch out her hand unto God." If youre not a person of color, its one thing to go to a couple of events or protests, or to read a few articles and move on. Nobody doubts it. Although the . His speeches continued to agitate for racial equality and women's rights. In July of 1852, Frederick Douglass delivered a speech titled "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?," a call for the promise of liberty be applied equally to all Americans. Above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, today, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. ROY: The better we get to know the people that we live with, that we work around, that we see at the coffee shop, and the more we talk about these important racial issues with one another, the easier it will be to heal our divided communities.