{"id":168782,"date":"2016-06-30T11:38:04","date_gmt":"2016-06-30T15:38:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/?p=168782"},"modified":"2016-07-05T09:27:08","modified_gmt":"2016-07-05T13:27:08","slug":"5th-of-july","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/5th-of-july\/","title":{"rendered":"Frederick Douglass delivered ‘best Fourth of July speech in American history’ in Rochester"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Frederick“This Fourth of July is yours<\/i>, not mine. You<\/i> may rejoice, I must mourn\u00a0. . .\u00a0Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day?”<\/p>\n

On July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass gave a speech at an Independence Day celebration organized by the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society. Though a biting critique of the federal government’s support of slavery and the\u00a0recently passed Fugitive Slave Act, the 500 to 600 people in attendance at Corinthian Hall heartily supported Douglass’s message.<\/p>\n

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 sound of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants brass fronted impudence; your shout of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanks-givings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy\u2014a 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n