What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? quotes
9 quotes from What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? by Frederick Douglass, each verified verbatim against the text and located in the book.
What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?
Frederick Douglass
About Frederick Douglass
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.
This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.
The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me.
America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future.
Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man?
At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed.
For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder.
interpreted, as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a Glorious Liberty Document.
I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope.
The Friday Letter
One story from the atlas, every Friday.
No algorithms chasing attention. A work, a place, and the connection between them — with the history checked.