The Meaning of July 4 for the Negro Read By Ossie Davis (1975) | Frederick Douglass

the meaning of July 4th for the negro the papers and placards say that I am to deliver a 4th of July oration this certainly sounds large and out of the common way for me it is true that I have often had the privilege to speak in this beautiful hall and to address many who now honor me with their presence but neither their familiar faces nor the perfect gaze I think I have of Corinthian Hall seems to free me from embarrassment the fact is ladies and gentlemen the distance between this platform and the slave plantation from which I escaped is considerable and the difficulties to be overcome and getting from the latter to the former by no means slight that I am here today is to me a matter of astonishment as well as of gratitude you will not therefore be surprised if in what I have to say I events no elaborate preparation nor grace my speech with any high sounding exordium with little experience and with less learning I have been able to throw my thoughts hastily and imperfectly together and trusting to your patient and generous indulgence I will proceed to lay them before you this for the purpose of this celebration is the 4th of July it is the birthday of your national independence and of your political freedom this to you is what the Passover was to the emancipated people of God 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 this celebration also marks the beginning of another year of your national life and reminds you that the Republic of America is now 76 years old I'm glad fellow-citizens that your nation is so young 76 years though a good old age for a man is but a mere speck in the life of a nation threescore years and ten is the allotted time for individual men but nation's number there years by thousands according to this fact you are even now only in the beginning of your national career still lingering in the period of childhood I repeat I am glad this is so there is hope in the thought and hope is much needed under the dark clouds which law above the horizon the eye of the reformer is met with angry flashes portending disastrous times but his heart may well be lighter at the thought that America is young and that she is still in the impressible stage of her existence may he not hope that high lessons of wisdom of justice and of truth will yet give direction to her destiny were the nation older the Patriots heart might be sadder and the Reformers brow heavier its future might be shrouded in gloom and the hope of its profits go out and sorrow there is consolation in the thought that America is young great streams are not easily turned from channels worn in the course of Ages they may sometimes rise and quiet and stately majesty and inundate the land refreshing and fertilizing the earth with their mysterious properties they may also rise in wrath and fury and bear away on their angry waves the accumulated wealth of years of toil and hardship they however gradually flow back to the same old channel and flow on as serenely as ever but while the river may not be turned aside it may dry up and leave nothing behind but the withered branch and the unsightly Rock to howl and the abyss sweeping wind the sad tale of departed glory as with rivers so with nations fellow citizens I am NOT wanting and respect for the fathers of this Republic the signers of the Declaration of Independence were brave men they were great men too great enough to give frame to a great age it does not often happen to a nation to raise at one time such a number of truly great men the point from which I am compelled to view them is not certainly the most favorable and yet I cannot contemplate their great deeds with less than admiration there 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 they loved their country better than their own private interests and though this is not the highest form of human excellence all will concede that it is a rare virtue and that when it is exhibited it ought to command respect he who will intelligently laid his life for his country is a man whom it is not in human nature to despise your father's stake their lives their fortunes and their sacred honor on the cause of their country in their admiration of Liberty they lost sight of all other interest they were peace men when they preferred revolution to peaceful submission to bondage they were quiet men but they did not shrink from agitating against oppression they showed forbearance but they knew its limits they believed in order but not in the order of tyranny with them nothing was settled that was not right with them justice liberty and humanity were final not slavery and oppression you may well cherish the memory of such men they were great in their day and generation they're solid manhood stands out the more as we contrast it with these degenerate times how circumspect exact and proportionate were all their movements how unlike the politicians of an hour their statesmanship look beyond the passing moment and stretched away and strength into the distant future they seized upon eternal principles and set a glorious example in their defense mark them fully appreciating the hardships to be encountered firmly believing in the right of their cause honorably inviting the scrutiny of an on looking world reverently appealing to heaven to attest their sincerity soundly comprehending the solemn responsibilities they were about to assume wisely measuring the terrible odds against them your fathers the fathers of this Republic did most deliberately under the inspiration of a glorious patriotism and with a sublime faith and the great principles of justice and freedom lay deep the cornerstone of the national superstructure which has risen and still rises and grandeur around you of this fundamental work this day is the anniversary our highs are met with demonstrations of joyous enthusiasm banners and pennants wave exultingly on the breeze the den of business too is hushed even Mammon seems to have quitted his grasp on this day the ear piercing Fife and the stirring drum unite their accents with the ascending peal of a thousand church bells prayers are made hymns are songs and sermons are preached in honor of this day while the quick martial [ __ ] of a great and multitudinous nation echoed back by all the hills valleys and mountains of a vast continent we speak the occasion one of thrilling and universal interest a nation's Jubilee fellow-citizens pardon me allow me to ask why am I called upon to speak here today what have I are those I represent to do with your national independence other great principles of political freedom and of national justice embodied in that Declaration of Independence extended to us 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 then would my task be light and my burden easy and delightful for who is there so cold that our nation's separate they could not warm him who so obdurate and dead to the claims of gratitude that would not funk fillet acknowledge such priceless benefits whose so solid and selfish that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nation's jubilee when the chains of servitude had been torn from his lens I am NOT that man in a case like that the dumb might eloquently speak and the lame man leap as in heart but such is not the state of the case I say it with a sad sense of disparity between us I am NOT included within the pale of this glorious anniversary your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us the blessings in which you this day rejoice are not enjoyed in common the rich inheritance of justice liberty prosperity and independence bequeath by your father's it's shared by you not by me the sunlight that brought light and healing to you has brought stripes and death to me this fourth of July is yours not mine you may rejoice I must mourn to drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of Liberty and call upon him to join you and joyous anthems were inhuman macaroni and sacrilegious tyranny do you mean citizens to mock me by asking me to speak today if so there is a parallel to your conduct and let me warn you that it is dangerous to copy the examples of a nation whose crimes powering up to heaven was thrown down by the breasts of the almighty bearing that nation in irrevocable ruin I can today take up the plaintiff element of appealed and woe smitten people by the rivers of Babylon there we sat down yay we wept when we remembered Zion we hanged our harps upon the Willows in the midst thereof for their thee that carried us away captive required of us a song and thee that wasted us required of us mirth saying sing us one of the songs of Zion how shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land if I forget thee O Jerusalem let my right hand forget her cunning if I do not remember thee let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth fellow citizens above your national tumultuous joy I hear the mournful wail of millions whose chains heavy and breathers yesterday are today rendered more intolerable by the Jubilee shells that reach them if I do forget if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day may my right hand forget her cunning and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth 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 my subject then fellow citizens is American slavery I shall see this day and it's popular characteristics from the slaves part of view standing there identified with the American bondman making his wrongs mine I do not hesitate to declare with all my soul that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me that on the 4th of July weather return to the declaration to the past or to the profession to the present the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting America is false to the past false to the presence and solemnly binds herself to be false to the Future standing with God and the Christian 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 in the Bible which are disregarded and trampled upon dare to call in question and to denounce with all the illnesses I can command everything that serves to perpetuate slavery the great sin and shame of America I will not equivocate I will not excuse I will use this various language I can command and yet not one word shall escape me that any man whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice who is not as far a slave holder shall not confess be right and just but I fancy I hear someone of my audience say it is just in this circumstance that you and your brother abolitionists fail to make a favorable impression on the public mind would you argue more and denounce less would you persuade more and rebuke less your cause would be much more likely to succeed when I submit we're all is plain there is nothing to be argued what point in the anti-slavery Creed would you have me argue on what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man that point is conceded already nobody doubts it the slaveholders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws of their government they acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave there are 72 crimes in the state of Virginia which if committed by a black man no matter how ignorant he be subject him to the punishment of death while only two of the same crimes will subject a white man to the like punishment what is this but the acknowledgement that the slave is a moral intellectual and responsible being the manhood of the slave is conceded it is admitted in the fact that southern statute books are covered with enactments forbidding under severe fines and penalties the teaching of the slave to read or to write when you can point to any such laws and reference to the beasts of the field then I may consent to argue the manhood of the slave when the dogs in your street when the fowls of the air when the cattle on your hills when the fish of the sea and the reptiles that crawl shall be unable to distinguish the slave from a brute then will I argue with you that the sleigh Eve is a man for the present it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race is it not astonishing that while we are plowing planting and reaping using all kinds of mechanical tools erecting houses constructing bridges building ships working in metals of brass iron copper silver and gold that while we are reading writing and ciphering acting as clerks merchants and secretaries having among us lawyers doctors ministers poets authors editors artists and teachers that while we are engaged in all manner of enterprises common to other men digging gold in California capturing the whale in the Pacific feeding sheep and cattle on the hillside living moving acting thinking planning living in families as husbands wives and children and above all confessing and worshipping the Christians God and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave we are called upon to prove that we are men would you have me argue that man is entitled to Liberty that he is the rightful owner of his own body you have already declared it must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery is that a question for Republicans is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation as a matter beset with great difficulty involving a doubtful application of the principle of justice hard to be understood how should I look today in the presence of Americans dividing and subdividing a discourse to show that men have a natural right to freedom speaking of it relatively and positively negatively and affirmatively to so would be to make myself ridiculous and to offer an insult to your understanding there is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven that does not know that slavery is wrong for him what am I to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes to rob them of their liberty to work them without wages to keep them ignorant of their relations to their fellow men to beat them with sticks to Flay their flesh with the lash to load their limbs with irons to hunt them with dogs to sell them at auction to sunder their families to knock out their teeth to burn their flesh to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters must I argue that a system thus marked with blood and stained with pollution is wrong no I will not I have better employment from our time and strength that such arguments would imply what then remains to be argued is it that slavery is not divine that God did not establish it there are doctors of divinity are mistaken there is blasphemy in the thought that which is inhuman cannot be divine who can reason on such a proposition they that can may I cannot the time for such argument is passed at a time like this scorching irony not convincing argument is needed though had I the ability and could reach the nation's ear I would today pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule blasting reproach withering sarcasm and stern rebuke for it is not light that is needed but fire it is not the gentle shower but Thunder we need the storm the whirlwind and the earth 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 then its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced what to the American slave is your fourth 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 and unholy license your national greatness swelling vanity your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless your denunciation of tyrants brass frontal 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 bum bust fraud deception impiety and hypocrisy the sin will 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 gudy than other people of the United States at this very hour go away you may search where you will roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world travel through South America search out every abuse and who 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 raised without arrival take the American slave trade which we are told by the papers is especially prosperous just now a senator Benton tells us that the price of men was never higher than now he mentions the fact to show that slavery is in no danger this trade is one of the peculiarities of American institutions it is carried on in all the large towns and cities in one half of this Confederate and millions are pocketed every year by dealers in this horrid traffic in several states this trade is a chief source of wealth it is called in Contra distinction to the foreign slave trade the internal slave trade it is probably called so - in order to avert from it the horror with which the foreign slave trade is contemplated that trade has long since been denounced by this government as piracy it has been denounced with burning words from the high places of the nation as an ex [ __ ] traffic to arrest it to put an end to it this nation keeps a squadron at immense cost on the coast of Africa everywhere in this country it is safe to speak of this foreign slave trade as a most inhuman traffic oppose the light to the laws of God and of man the duty to extirpate and destroy it is admitted even by our doctors of divinity in order to put an end to it some of these last have considered that their colored brethren nominally free should leave this country and establish themselves on the western coast of Africa it is however a notable fact that while so much execration is poured out by Americans upon all those engaged in the foreign slave trade the men engaged in the slave trade between the states pass without condemnation and their business is deemed honourable behold the practical operation of this internal slave trade the American slave trade sustained by American politics and American religion here you will see men and women rear like swine for the market you know what is a swine drover I will show you a man drover they inhabit all our southern states they perambulate the country and crowd the highways of the nation with droves of human stock you will see one of these human flesh Jabez armed with pistol whip and bowie knife driving a company of a hundred men women and children from the potomac to the slave market in new orleans these wretched people are to be sold singly or in Lots to suit the purchases they are food for the cotton field and the deadly sugar mill mark the sad procession as it moves wearily along and the inhuman wretch who drives them here his savage yells and his blood-curdling oaths as he hurries on his affrighted captives there see the old man with locks thinned and gray cast one glance if you please upon that young mother whose shoulders are bare to the scorching Sun the briny tears falling on the brow of the babe in her arms see to that girl of thirteen weeping yes weeping as she thinks of the mother from whom she has been torn the drove moves tardily heat and sorrow have nearly consumed their strength suddenly you hear a quick snap like a discharge of a rifle the fetters Clank and the chain rattles simultaneously your ears are saluted with a scream that seems to have torn its way to the center of your soul the crack you heard was from the sound of the slave with the scream you heard was from the woman you saw with a babe her speed had faltered under the weight of a child and her chains that gash on her shoulder tells her to move on follow this drove to New Orleans attend the auction see the men examined like horses see the form of the win rudely and brutally exposed to the shocking gaze of American slave buyers see this drove sold and separated forever and never forget the deep sad sobs that arose from that scattered multitude tell me citizens where under the Sun you can witness a spectacle more fiendish and shocking yet this is but a glance at the American slave trade as it exists at this moment in the ruling part of the United States I was born amid such sights and seems to me the American slave trade is a terrible reality when a child my soul was often pierced with a sense of its horrors I lived on Philpott Street Fells Point Baltimore and have watched from the walls the slave ships in the basin anchored from the shore with their cargoes of human flesh waiting for favorable winds to aft them down the Chesapeake there was at that time a grand slave mart kept at the head of Pratt Street by Austin Woolf Oh his agents were sent in to every town and County in Maryland announcing their arrival through the papers and on flaming handbills headed cash for Negroes these men were generally well-dressed men and very captivating in their manners ever ready to drink to treat and to gamble the fate of many a slaves has depended upon the turn of a single card and many a child has been snatched from the arms of his mother by bargains arranged in a state of brutal drunkenness the flesh mongers gather up their victims by the dozens and drive them chained to the general Depot at Baltimore when a sufficient number has been collected here a ship is chartered for the purpose of conveying the fallen crew to mobile or to New Orleans from the slave prison to the ship they are usually driven in the darkness of night for since the anti-slavery agitation a certain caution is observed in the deep still darkness of midnight I have been often aroused by the dead heavy footsteps and a piteous cries of the chain gangs that passed out door the anguish of my boyish heart was intense and I was often consoled when speaking to my mistress in the morning to hear her say that the custom was very wicked that she hated to hear the rattle of the chains and the heart-rending cries I was glad to find one who sympathized with me in Mahara fellow-citizens this murderous traffic is today an active operation in this boasted Republic in the solitude of my spirit I see clouds of dust raised on the highways of the south I see the bleeding footsteps I hear the doleful wail of feathered humanity on the way to the slave markets whether victims are to be sold like horses sheep and swine knocked off to the highest bidder there I see the tenderest eyes ruthlessly broken to gratify the lust Caprice and rapacity of the buyers and sellers of men my soul sick at the site is this the land your fathers loved the freedom which they toiled to win is this the earth whereon they moved are these the graves they slumbers in Americans your Republican politics not less than your Republican religion are flagrantly inconsistent you boast of your love of Liberty your superior civilization and your pure Christianity while the whole political power of the nation as embodied in the two great political parties is solemnly pledged to support and perpetuate the enslavement of three millions of your countrymen you hurl your Anathem l's at the crowned head tyrants of Russia and Austria and pride yourselves on your democratic institutions while you yourselves consent to be mere tools and bodyguards of the tyrants of Virginia and Carolina you invite to your Shores fugitives of oppression from abroad honor them with banquets greet them with ovations cheer them toast them salute them protect them and pour out your money to them like water but the fugitive from your own land you advertise hunt arrest shoot and kill you glory in your refinement and your universal education yet you maintain a system as barbarous and dreadful has ever stained the character of a nation a system begun in a verse supported in Pride and perpetuated in cruelty you shed tears over fallen Hungary and make the sad story of her wrongs the theme of your poets statesman and orator z' till your gallant sons are ready to fly to arms do indicate her cause against the oppressor but in regards to the ten thousand rounds of the American slave you would enforce the strictest silence and hail him as an enemy of the nation who dares to make those wrongs from the subject of public discourse you are all on fire at the mention of Liberty for France or for Ireland but a coal is an iceberg at the thought of Liberty for the enslaved of America you discourse eloquently on the dignity of labour yet you sustain a system which in its very essence casts a stigma upon labor you can bare your bosom to the storm of British artillery to throw off a Threepenny tax unti and yet wring the last harder and farthing from the grasp of a black laborer of your country you profess to believe that a one blood God made all nations of men to dwell on the face of the earth and has commanded all men everywhere to love one another yet you notoriously hate and glory in your hatred all men whose skins are not colored like your own you declare before the world and are understood by the world to declare that you hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights and that among these are life liberty and the pursuit of happiness and yet you hold securely and a bondage which according to your own Thomas Jefferson is worse than ages of that which your father's rose and rebellion to oppose a seventh part of the inhabitants of your country fellow citizens I will not enlarge further on your national inconsistencies the existence of slavery in this country brands your republicanism as a sham your humanity as a base pretence and your Christianity a lie it destroys your moral power abroad it corrupts your politicians at home it saps the foundation of religion it makes your name a hissing and a byword to a mocking earth it is the antagonistic force in your government the only thing that seriously disturbs and endangers your union it senses 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 Sheep anchor of all your hopes Oh be warned be warned a horrible reptile is coiled up in your nation's bosom the venomous creature is nicing at the tender breasts 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 for era

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Length: 41min 58sec (2518 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 04 2020