National Juneteenth Observance Foundation
Celebration of Freedom
Frederick Douglass Legacy
"WHAT TO THE AMERICAN SLAVE IS YOUR 4TH OF
JULY?"
By Frederick Douglass
To National Juneteenth Network, Supporters & Friends:
As the "4th of July", 1776, American Independence Day, comes around again, let us not forget that the ancestors of Americans of African descent were trapped in the tyranny of slavery. Juneteenth, the "19th of June", 1865, African-American Independence Day, America's 2nd Independence Day, recognizing the end of enslavement, did not occur until over 88 years after the first "4th of July".
The words of Frederick Douglass, a former slave, brilliantly written in "What to the American Slave is your 4th of July?", continues as the best historic reminder of why the "4th of July" should never be celebrated without being reminded of the significance of the "19th of June" in America.
* Giving up something you want in order to help someone else.
* Learning how to challenge and overcome doubt.
* Understanding why and how to control the human ego.
* Doing what is right and proper without delay, even if no one is looking.
* Learning how to use knowledge and understanding wisely.
* Overcoming indecisiveness by developing proper organizational skills.
* Making gratitude a part of every thought and action.
* Practicing the skill of listening before making judgments.
* Remaining true to your word.
* Practicing the art of giving without expecting something in return.
* Recognizing that success is as much a motivation to others as to you.
By Frederick Douglass
To National Juneteenth Network, Supporters & Friends:
As the "4th of July", 1776, American Independence Day, comes around again, let us not forget that the ancestors of Americans of African descent were trapped in the tyranny of slavery. Juneteenth, the "19th of June", 1865, African-American Independence Day, America's 2nd Independence Day, recognizing the end of enslavement, did not occur until over 88 years after the first "4th of July".
The words of Frederick Douglass, a former slave, brilliantly written in "What to the American Slave is your 4th of July?", continues as the best historic reminder of why the "4th of July" should never be celebrated without being reminded of the significance of the "19th of June" in America.
12 Principles
For Success Mentioned in Writings by Frederick Douglass
Copyright By Author Fred Morsell
Fremarjo Enterprises, Inc.
* Giving up something you want in order to help someone else.
* Learning how to challenge and overcome doubt.
* Understanding why and how to control the human ego.
* Doing what is right and proper without delay, even if no one is looking.
* Learning how to use knowledge and understanding wisely.
* Overcoming indecisiveness by developing proper organizational skills.
* Making gratitude a part of every thought and action.
* Practicing the skill of listening before making judgments.
* Remaining true to your word.
* Practicing the art of giving without expecting something in return.
* Recognizing that success is as much a motivation to others as to you.
"What To The American Slave Is Your 4th Of July?"
FREDERICK DOUGLASS SPEECH
July 5, 1852
Independence Day Speech at
(excerpt)
Frederick Douglass (A former slave himself, Frederick Douglass
became a leader in the 19th Century Abolitionist Movement)
***************************************************
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?
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 a nation's sympathy could not warm him? Who so obdurate and dead to the claims of gratitude that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? Who so stolid 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 limbs? I am not that man. In a case like that the dumb might eloquently speak and the "lame man leap as an hart."
But such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. 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 bequeathed by your fathers is 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 in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. 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 that it is dangerous to copy the example of nation whose crimes, towering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrevocable ruin! I can today take up the plaintive lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people.
"By the rivers ofBabylon Zion Zion
Fellow citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! Whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, today, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorry this day, "may my right hand 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 its popular characteristics from the slave's point 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 than on this Fourth of July! Whether we turn to the declarations of the past or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting.America
For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. Is it not as 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, and secretaries, having among us lawyers doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators, and teachers; and 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 worshiping the Christian's God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave, we are called upon to prove that we are men!...
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 for my time and strength than such arguments would imply....
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, 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 which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of theUnited States
Go where 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 when 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 reigns without a rival.
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 a nation's sympathy could not warm him? Who so obdurate and dead to the claims of gratitude that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? Who so stolid 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 limbs? I am not that man. In a case like that the dumb might eloquently speak and the "lame man leap as an hart."
But such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. 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 bequeathed by your fathers is 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 in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. 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 that it is dangerous to copy the example of nation whose crimes, towering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrevocable ruin! I can today take up the plaintive lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people.
"By the rivers of
Fellow citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! Whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, today, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorry this day, "may my right hand 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 its popular characteristics from the slave's point 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 than on this Fourth of July! Whether we turn to the declarations of the past or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting.
For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. Is it not as 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, and secretaries, having among us lawyers doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators, and teachers; and 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 worshiping the Christian's God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave, we are called upon to prove that we are men!...
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 for my time and strength than such arguments would imply....
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, 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 which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the
Go where 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 when 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 reigns without a rival.
1818 -- (Exact date
unknown) Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey is born on Holme Hill farm in
Talbot County on the Eastern Shore of Maryland to Harriet Bailey, a slave. Frederick
1826 -- Sent to live with Hugh Auld family inBaltimore
1827 -- Asks Sophia Auld to teach him his letters. Hugh Auld stops the lessons because he feels that learning makes slaves discontented and rebellious.
1834 -- Hired Out to Edward Covey, a "slave breaker", to break his spirit and make him accept slavery.
1836 -- Tries to escape from slavery, but his plot is discovered.
1836-38 -- Works inBaltimore
1838 -- Escapes from slavery, goes toNew York City ,
marries Anna Murray and settles in New
Bedford , Massachusetts
1839 -- Subscribes to William Garrison's The Liberator.
1841 -- First speaks at an antislavery meeting in Nantucket; William Lloyd Garrison hires him as a lecturer for the American Anti-Slavery Society; spends the next four years on the lecture circuit speaking out against slavery and campaigning for rights of free Blacks. 1842 -- Makes first visit toRochester
1845 -- Publishes the first of three autobiographies, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave; to escape recapture following publication, tours Great Britain as an antislavery speaker, visiting England, Scotland, and Ireland; British friends and supporters purchase his freedom a year later for £150 from Hugh Auld, his former master.
1847 -- Returns to theUnited
States Rochester ,
New York
1848 -- Attends the first Women's Rights Convention inSeneca Falls , New York
1850 -- Publishes an attack on the Compromise of 1850 and the new fugitive-slave law.
1851 -- Changes the name of North Star to Frederick Douglass's Paper. Helps three fugitiveMaryland slaves escape to Canada as "Station Master" of the Rochester
1852 -- Splits with Garrison over the means to achieve the abolition of slavery. Chosen vice-presidential candidate at the Liberal Party convention.
1855 -- Publishes his second autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom.
1858 -- John Brown stays at the Douglass home inRochester
1859 -- After assisting John Brown in drawing up plans to incite a slave revolt, Douglass declines to join the raid on Harper's Ferry; escapes toCanada to avoid being arrested and then sails to
England
1860 -- Returns to theUnited
States
1861 -- The Civil War begins. Calls for the use of Black troops to fight the Confederacy through the establishment of Negro regiments in the Union Army. November: Abraham Lincoln is elected president. December:South
Carolina secedes from the Union .
1862 -- Congress abolishes slavery inWashington ,
D.C.
1863 --Lincoln
1864 -- Meets withLincoln Lincoln
1865 -- April 14,Lincoln
1866 -- Attends convention of Equal Rights Association and clashes with women's rights leaders over their insistence that the vote not be extended to Black men unless it is given to all women at the same time.
1867 -- Turns down President Andrew Johnson's offer to name him commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau inasmuch as the National Black Leadership supported General Oliver O. Howard's continuation in the post.
1870 -- Becomes owner and editor of the New National Era, a weekly newspaper in Washington, D.C.
1871 -- President Ulysses S. Grant appoints Douglass to the Commission of Inquiry into the possible annexation of Santo Domingo.
1872 --Rochester Washington ,
DC
1874 -- Named president of the troubled Freedmen's Savings and Trust Company. Works with the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee to save the bank, which ultimately fails. 1875 -- Congress passes a Civil Rights Act prohibiting discrimination in public places.
1877 -- Appointed U.S. Marshal for theDistrict
of Columbia
1878 -- Purchases Cedar Hill, a 9-acre estate in the Anacostia section ofWashington , DC District of Columbia
1882 -- Anna Murray Douglass dies. Abolitionist 1813-1882
Because of her husband,Frederick Murray 's
financial efforts that Bailey was able to escape from Baltimore
to New York
1884 -- Having been a widower since 1882, Douglass marries Helen Pitts, his former secretary.
1889-91 -- Serves as minister and consul to Haiti, appointed by President Benjamin Harrison.
1891 -- Revises and then republishes Life and Times autobiography.
1892-93 -- Appointed Charge d'Affaires for Santo Domingo and Minister Resident and Consul-General to Haiti. Leads Haitian legation to World's Columbian Exposition.
1895 -- Dies at his home (Cedar Hill) of a heart attack.
1826 -- Sent to live with Hugh Auld family in
1827 -- Asks Sophia Auld to teach him his letters. Hugh Auld stops the lessons because he feels that learning makes slaves discontented and rebellious.
1834 -- Hired Out to Edward Covey, a "slave breaker", to break his spirit and make him accept slavery.
1836 -- Tries to escape from slavery, but his plot is discovered.
1836-38 -- Works in
1838 -- Escapes from slavery, goes to
1839 -- Subscribes to William Garrison's The Liberator.
1841 -- First speaks at an antislavery meeting in Nantucket; William Lloyd Garrison hires him as a lecturer for the American Anti-Slavery Society; spends the next four years on the lecture circuit speaking out against slavery and campaigning for rights of free Blacks. 1842 -- Makes first visit to
1845 -- Publishes the first of three autobiographies, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave; to escape recapture following publication, tours Great Britain as an antislavery speaker, visiting England, Scotland, and Ireland; British friends and supporters purchase his freedom a year later for £150 from Hugh Auld, his former master.
1847 -- Returns to the
1848 -- Attends the first Women's Rights Convention in
1850 -- Publishes an attack on the Compromise of 1850 and the new fugitive-slave law.
1851 -- Changes the name of North Star to Frederick Douglass's Paper. Helps three fugitive
1852 -- Splits with Garrison over the means to achieve the abolition of slavery. Chosen vice-presidential candidate at the Liberal Party convention.
1855 -- Publishes his second autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom.
1858 -- John Brown stays at the Douglass home in
1859 -- After assisting John Brown in drawing up plans to incite a slave revolt, Douglass declines to join the raid on Harper's Ferry; escapes to
1860 -- Returns to the
1861 -- The Civil War begins. Calls for the use of Black troops to fight the Confederacy through the establishment of Negro regiments in the Union Army. November: Abraham Lincoln is elected president. December:
1862 -- Congress abolishes slavery in
1863 --
1864 -- Meets with
1865 -- April 14,
1866 -- Attends convention of Equal Rights Association and clashes with women's rights leaders over their insistence that the vote not be extended to Black men unless it is given to all women at the same time.
1867 -- Turns down President Andrew Johnson's offer to name him commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau inasmuch as the National Black Leadership supported General Oliver O. Howard's continuation in the post.
1870 -- Becomes owner and editor of the New National Era, a weekly newspaper in Washington, D.C.
1871 -- President Ulysses S. Grant appoints Douglass to the Commission of Inquiry into the possible annexation of Santo Domingo.
1872 --
1874 -- Named president of the troubled Freedmen's Savings and Trust Company. Works with the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee to save the bank, which ultimately fails. 1875 -- Congress passes a Civil Rights Act prohibiting discrimination in public places.
1877 -- Appointed U.S. Marshal for the
1878 -- Purchases Cedar Hill, a 9-acre estate in the Anacostia section of
1882 -- Anna Murray Douglass dies. Abolitionist 1813-1882
Because of her husband,
1884 -- Having been a widower since 1882, Douglass marries Helen Pitts, his former secretary.
1889-91 -- Serves as minister and consul to Haiti, appointed by President Benjamin Harrison.
1891 -- Revises and then republishes Life and Times autobiography.
1892-93 -- Appointed Charge d'Affaires for Santo Domingo and Minister Resident and Consul-General to Haiti. Leads Haitian legation to World's Columbian Exposition.
1895 -- Dies at his home (Cedar Hill) of a heart attack.