"What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July?
I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is a 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 denunciation 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 that would disgrace a nation of savages.
There is not a nation of the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour."
#FredrickDouglass #July4 #Hyprocracy