WHAT TO THE SLAVE IS 4TH OF JULY

When James Earl Jones was on stage or on screen, his voice rumbled, his presentation poured forth and his craft was unmistakably powerful. The world learned Jones (1931-2024) passed away on 9 September at 93. His legacy will be remembered in how he orated monologues, such as freedom fighter Frederick Douglas’s speech, ‘What to the Slave Is Your 4th of July,’ during a 5 July 2004 performance of Voices of a People’s History of the United States.

In the speech Douglass gave to the Rochester Ladies Anti-Slavery Society in 1852 in New York, he chastised the United States’ biggest holiday, the Fourth of July, a day marking US independence from Britain. Despite the Declaration of Independence being predicated upon ‘equality of men,’ Africans remained slaves until 1865. What freedom then, Douglass asks, is there to celebrate?

Frederick Douglass was born in 1818 on a plantation owned by then Maryland governor and US senator Edward Lloyd V. He escaped at age 20, and dedicated his life to fighting for abolition of slavery. He was a dedicated reader and powerful orator. He wrote hundreds of essays, a novel, three autobiographies and thousands of speeches.

When the civil war broke, Douglass lobbied President Lincoln to free and arm all enslaved Africans. ‘End slavery right now. Free them and arm them. They know the South far better than anyone else.’ It is argued that had Lincoln’s administration heeded the advice earlier, the war would have been concluded sooner.

Douglass’ words, like many of our ancestors’, ring as true today as it did then. The United States is still divided along racial lines. Africans in the United States are disenfranchised economically, with the average African household being 10 times less wealthy than their white counterparts. The gap is only widening. What then, as Douglass asked, is the 4th of July to a slave?

Video credit: @democracynow