LAD #18

What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?

In Frederick Douglas' Fourth of July Speech, he introduces American people to a different side of one of the United States' most celebrated and patriotic holidays. While whites rejoice on the Fourth of July and celebrate their independence, blacks can only note the hypocrisy of the entire holiday. Frederick Douglas wonders how Americans can celebrate their independence on the Fourth of July while blacks remain slaves; people toiling for unsympathetic masters who beat them, separate them from their families, do not provide them with enough food, and do not pay them. Douglas comes to the conclusion that the Fourth of July is not really a holiday of independence. On the contrary, whites became independent of Britain's hold on them, while they hypocritically did not provide equality and freedom to their slaves. Douglas states that while whites celebrate the Fourth, blacks are left to mourn their mistreatment and unfair position in American society.