“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 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 on the earth guilty of practices more shocking
and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.”
What I think Douglass meant by this statement is that behind the
celebration of a national holiday lays a dark past fill with injustice,
cruelty, beating, and disappointment. He states that those holidays promoted
liberty and equality when in realty it was the opposite. It was a mockery and a
deception to all those people that suffered injustice and cruelty. Those
holidays were just a cover up to hide the real meaning of the United States. He
states that there isn’t a nation that is more disgrace and have more blood on
their hands that the United States. It’s crazy to think that a nation that
suppose to be the most successful, most free, and the nation with the most opportunities;
have such dark and disgraceful past. This passage relates to our theme of
lecture because it falls under civil disobedience. “The idea
of civil disobedience is peculiar to democratic societies. It means
breaking the law and thus challenging the authorities, but usually in a
non-violent fashion.” They refuse to celebrate a nations holiday because they believe
it was fraud and a mockery to them. They did not agree with the nation and it’s
celebrations.
I picked Douglass and this particular passage because I have
read a couple of passages from Douglass in my other Political Science class and
I find him to be very interesting. I like his work because it takes me back to
slavery days and I get a good view of how cruelty it was. I also picked this
passage because I have always taught that the fourth of July was a great
holiday to show our love and respect for our nation. I never imagine that other
people would see it as a negative holiday. I put myself in Douglass shoes, and
I see why he would feel that way. I would had felt the same way. I don’t bash
our nation because I feel like we have a 50/50 nation. Meaning I believe this
is a great and one of the best nation there is but there is so much to this
nation that we do not know of.
I agree with you Maria, Frederick Douglass has actually seen the fourth of July to be a mockery of some sort, and that is somewhat strange. I like the fact that you decided to put yourself in his shoes and see society from his own perspective, the thought that there are so many secrets we have not uncovered makes me even more curious. I see why to some extent he felt that way, with what was happening in his time. The idea of seeing Fourth of July as a personal insult is incogitable.Great job on the post, it was very interesting!
ReplyDeleteI agree with Maria because we are celebrating things just for the sake of celebrating or purchasing new clothes to go parading around outside not knowing what the true meaning of these holidays and what the African American ancestors had to endure to get us where we are now in life.
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