Frederick douglass 4th of july speech
Frederick douglass 4th of july speech
Frederick douglass 4th of july speech full text.
What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?
1852 speech by Frederick Douglass
"What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?"[1][2] was a speech delivered by Frederick Douglass on July 5, 1852, at Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York, at a meeting organized by the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society.[3] In the address, Douglass states that positive statements about perceived American values, such as liberty, citizenship, and freedom, were an offense to the enslaved population of the United States because they lacked those rights.
Douglass referred not only to the captivity of enslaved people, but to the merciless exploitation and the cruelty and torture that slaves were subjected to in the United States.[4]
Noted for its biting irony and bitter rhetoric, and acute textual analysis of the U.S.
Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Christian Bible, the speech is among the most widely known of all of Douglass's writings.[