WHAT TO THE SLAVE IS THE FOURTH OF JULY?
By Frederick Douglass
Extract from an Oration, at Rochester, July 5, 1852
Fellow Citizens-Pardon me, and allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day What have 1or those I represent, to do with your national Independence Are the great principles of political freedom
and of natural Justice, embodied in that Dedaration 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?
But, such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not Induded within the pale of this glorious anniversaryl 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 life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mour. To drag a man in fetters into the grand
illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in forous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, tizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to dan...
Fellow citizens, above your national, tumultuous Jov, I hear the mournful wail of millions, whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are to day rendered more intolerable by the Jubilant shouts that reach them.
If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue deave 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 bandman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to dedare,
with all my son, 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
Which of the following correctly explains the main purpose of Douglass's speech(5 points)
To argue that Americans have little to celebrate
To suggest an alternative form of celebration
To imply it is time to develop new American traditions
To explain the effects of slavery on culture
