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Tuesday, July 6, 2021

A Sense of Doubt blog post #2331 - July Fourth and what it meant to SLAVES - Frederick Douglass Speech 1852



A Sense of Doubt blog post #2331 - July Fourth and what it meant to SLAVES - Frederick Douglass Speech 1852

Spurred on by FOX NEWS and other brainwashing propaganda tools that destroy capacity to think and reason, conservatives are all in a twist about CRITICAL RACE THEORY even though they do not understand much of anything about it.

Nationwide, it's been a long time coming for WHITE PEOPLE to check their privilege and seek to better understand that the experiences of people of color -- we'll just speak of black Americans here, and most specifically those in bondage as slaves in 18th and 19th Century America -- and how even the FOURTH OF JULY represents independence for the privileged and not for everyone.

In light of this fact, it's even more important to make JUNETEENTH a national holiday on the same level as INDEPENDENCE DAY because the independence celebrated on July Fourth was only independence for some and not for all.

And yet, so many white people have problem with anything that affects their privilege because many do not even see their own unearned privilege conveyed by their race.

Recently, in reaction to JUNETEENTH being declared a holiday, someone I know said "where is the holiday for white people?"

UM.

Well...

White people have all the holidays. CLEARLY, July Fourth is not a celebration of freedom from slavery because most black people in America were enslaved in 1776 and most of the founding fathers owned slaves. It's a source of great debate as to whether Jefferson really meant ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL when he wrote those words in the DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.

Someone else with whom I had a discussion remarked that Juneteenth was not really the true end of slavery, in fact it was only freedom for certain slaves in a geographic area and it would be many years before slavery was truly abolished (only then to be replaced by another form of servitude and set of restrictions and laws).

But symbolically, Juneteenth has been acknowledged as the end of slavery and celebrated as such much like INDEPENDENCE DAY is acknowledged as the start of the United States of America and freedom from British rule even though that did not truly happen for many years yet and Britain still refused to acknowledge America for quite some time after the end of the Revolutionary War.

But was it "independence" for the slaves? No.

Are white people shooting off fireworks and traumatizing our pets on Juneteenth?

No.

And so, here's Frederick Douglass' speech, one of the greatest speeches ever documented in the English language from an event held by the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society. Bold move for 1852 in which he eviscerated the Fourth of July and white people.

White people created racism. White people perpetuate racism. It's up to white people to FIX RACISM by ending it.

This is really worth a READ.

Take your time.

Check your privilege.

When you're done reading, let's talk.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2021/07/04/frederick-douglass-july-4th-slavery/

Frederick Douglass had nothing but scorn for July Fourth. The Black abolitionist spoke for the enslaved.

‘What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July?’ Douglass demanded in 1852

Frederick Douglass circa 1852, when he was in his mid-30s. (Samuel J. Miller/Art Institute of Chicago)

 By 


“The papers and placards say that I am to deliver a 4th [of] July oration.”

So began Frederick Douglass on the platform of Corinthian Hall in Rochester, N.Y. It was a Monday, the day after the Fourth of July in 1852, and he was speaking to a packed room of 500 to 600 people hosted by the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society. Douglass was about 35 years old (he never knew his actual birth date) and had escaped enslavement in Maryland 14 years earlier.

Although by this time he was world-renowned for his speeches, he began modestly, reminding the crowd that he had begun his life enslaved and had no formal education.

“With little experience and with less learning, I have been able to throw my thoughts hastily and imperfectly together,” he began, “and trusting to your patient and generous indulgence, I will proceed to lay them before you.”

Over the next hour and a half, Douglass made what is now thought to be among the finest speeches ever delivered: “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” He quoted Shakespeare, Longfellow, Jefferson, and the Old Testament. He certainly bellowed in moments, exclaiming and anguishing in others. He painted vivid pictures of exalted patriots and the wretched of the earth.



First, he posited that while 76 was old for a man, it was young for a nation. America was but an adolescent, he said, and that was a good thing. That meant there was hope of its maturing vs. being forever stuck in its ways.

He wove through the familiar tale of taxation without representation, tea parties and declarations of independence. “Oppression makes a wise man mad,” he said. “Your fathers were wise men, and if they did not go mad, they became restive under this treatment.”

Perhaps at this point it was imperceptible to his audience that Douglass repeatedly said “yours” and not “ours.” Did they notice the hint of what was to come?


But his business was with the present, not the past, he said, and here his critique began to build.

“Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here today? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural 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?”
...
“The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth [of] July is yours, not mineYou 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 in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day?”
...
“At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could I 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 earthquake. 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.
“What, to the American slave, is your 4th 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, 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. 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.”
...
“Behold the practical operation of this internal slave-trade, the American slave-trade, sustained by American politics and America religion. Here you will see men and women reared 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-jobbers, armed with pistol, whip and bowie knife, driving a company of a hundred men, women, and children, from the Potomac to the slave market at New Orleans. These wretched people are to be sold singly, or in lots, to suit purchasers. 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. Hear his savage yells and his blood-chilling 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, her briny tears falling on the brow of the babe in her arms. See, too, 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 the 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 the sound of the slave-whip; the scream you heard, was from the woman you saw with the babe. Her speed had faltered under the weight of her child and her chains! that gash on her shoulder tells her to move on.
“Follow the drove to New Orleans. Attend the auction; see men examined like horses; see the forms of women 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.”

He also indicted the American church, “with fractional exceptions,” for its “indifference” to the suffering of the enslaved, its willingness to obey laws so clearly immoral. It was a theme echoed a century later by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in his “Letter From Birmingham Jail.”

The church, Douglass charged, “esteems sacrifice above mercy; psalm-singing above right doing; solemn meetings above practical righteousness. A worship that can be conducted by persons who refuse to give shelter to the houseless, to give bread to the hungry, clothing to the naked, and who enjoin obedience to a law forbidding these acts of mercy, is a curse, not a blessing to mankind.”

He turns to the Constitution, and here he defends it and raises it up as a pathway to liberation for the enslaved. this treatment.”

“In that instrument I hold there is neither warrant, license, nor sanction of the hateful thing [slavery]; but, interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT. Read its preamble, consider its purposes. Is slavery among them? ... [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. What would be thought of an instrument, drawn up, legally drawn up, for the purpose of entitling the city of Rochester to a track of land, in which no mention of land was made?”

That is why, he said, despite the “dark picture” he painted, “I do not despair of this country.”

“There are forces in operation, which must inevitably work the downfall of slavery. ‘The arm of the Lord is not shortened,’ and the doom of slavery is certain,” he says. “I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope.”

When he finished speaking and took his seat, “there was a universal burst of applause,” according to one newspaper account. Within a few minutes he had promised to publish his words as a pamphlet.

Douglass was right. The forces that would end slavery in little more than a decade were in operation, and he was one of those forces.

But he couldn’t see what would follow: sharecropping and Jim Crow, redlining and Bull Connor, incarceration rates and George Floyd. Would Douglass still figure us an adolescent nation, with the youthful hope of transformation — or something else?



Read more Retropolis:



Gillian Brockell is a staff writer for The Washington Post's history blog, Retropolis. She has been at The Post since 2013 and previously worked as a video editor.  Twitter



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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2107.06 - 10:10

- Days ago = 2195 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.


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