God speed the day when human blood And never from my chosen post, The slaveholders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. Were the nation older, the patriots heart might be sadder, and the reformers brow heavier. This power fuels modern abolition movements, whether of human trafficking, prison or police. As we emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, our economy continues to recover. These rules are well established. Shall exercise a lordly power, You may rejoice, I must mourn.. Funny you should ask. The Act also denied suspected slaves trial by jury or even the ability to testify on their own behalf in court. The political party system was beginning to tear itself asunder over the expansion of slavery, he says. The point from which I am compelled to view them is not, certainly, the most favorable; and yet I cannot contemplate their great deeds with less than admiration. This is the inevitable conclusion, and from it there is no escape. Who so stolid and selfish, that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nations jubilee, when the chains of servitude had been torn from his limbs? The main message of Douglass's speech is that it is hypocritical to celebrate the Fourth of July as a day of freedom and independence while slaves are not independent nor do they have freedom. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, is inhuman mockery. No abuse, no outrage whether in taste, sport or avarice, can now hide itself from the all-pervading light. Throughout this speech, as well as his life, Douglass advocated equal justice and rights, as well as citizenship, for blacks. That first year, 2009, was also President Obamas first year in office. What would be thought of an instrument, drawn up, legally drawn up, for the purpose of entitling the city of Rochester to a track of land, in which no mention of land was made? Throughout this speech, as well as his life, Douglass advocated equal justice and rights, as well as citizenship, for blacks.He begins his speech by modestly apologizing for being nervous in front of the crowd and recognizes that he has come a long way since his escape from slavery. By equal birth! Wells, which was incorporated into the preface of her 1892 pamphlet Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases.. "It is," he declares, "the birthday of your National Independence, and of your political freedom." In doing so he sets the stage to distinguish the holiday for his audience and establishes the gulf between those in his audience and those who remain in bondage. The point from which I am compelled to view them is not, certainly, the most favorable; and yet I cannot contemplate their great deeds with less than admiration. When the dogs in your streets, when the fowls of the air, when the cattle on your hills, when the fish of the sea, and the reptiles that crawl, shall be unable to distinguish the slave from a brute, then will I argue with you that the slave is a man! GAZETTE: Why is it important to do this kind of community-building work at a local level? From what point of view does he look at it? To break the rod, and rend the gyve, Your fathers were wise men, and if they did not go mad, they became restive under this treatment. Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. You have reached your limit of free articles. 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 cleave to the roof of my mouth!" On July 2nd, people from across Massachusetts will gather at noon on Boston Common near the State House for the 11th annual public reading of Douglasss historic address. When from their galling chains set free, or is it in the temple? They were quiet men; but they did not shrink from agitating against oppression. Nobody doubts it. Obviously, the speech has taken a much darker meaning in the Age of [President Donald] Trump. The Compromise of 1850 had failed to resolve the controversy over the admission of new slaveholding states to the Union. It carries your minds back to the day, and to the act of your great deliverance; and to the signs, and to the wonders, associated with that act, and that day. speaking of it relatively and positively, negatively and affirmatively. His speeches continued to agitate for racial equality and women's rights. Although the . Douglasss searing ability to cut through the rhetoric of freedom and democracy lives on in works like these that reveal the enduring cruelty of the exemption as it continues to haunt our flawed legal and punishment systems. And change into a faithful friend Great streams are not easily turned from channels, worn deep in the course of ages. He begins his speech by modestly apologizing for being nervous in front of the crowd and recognizes that he has come a long way since his escape from slavery. This speech is now remembered as oneof Douglass' most poignant. With them, nothing was "settled" that was not right. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. Its also an election year; the 1852 presidential election was heating up that summer. Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? SOURCE FORMAT: Public speech (excerpt) WORD COUNT: 1,660 words Excerpt from Frederick Douglass's "Fifth of July" Speech (1852). Their statesmanship looked beyond the passing moment, and stretched away in strength into the distant future. As I mentioned earlier, the first reading was designed to the think about race in the Age of Obama. I remember that first year, looking out at the crowd I was filled with the kind of hope Douglass expressed at the end of his speech. They, however, gradually flow back to the same old channel, and flow on as serenely as ever. I doubt even Douglass could have anticipated the technology we have or its uses. 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. A small group would gather in a circle and take turns reading paragraphs from the speech. With them, nothing was settled that was not right. He was invited to give a fourth of July speech by the Ladies Anti-Slavery Society of Rochester. I said then and throughout his presidency that rather than freeing us from talking about race, his election freed us to talk about it; and we entitled that first event: Reading Frederick Douglass in the Age of Obama.. Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country. Three score years and ten is the allotted time for individual men; but nations number their years by thousands. What is the main message of Douglass's speech? They were peace men; but they preferred revolution to peaceful submission to bondage. What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? How can we sing the Lord's song in a strange land? is the popular name of a speech delivered by Frederick Douglass on the Fifth of July 1852 in Rochester, N.Y.. And instead of being the honest men I have before declared them to be, they were the veriest imposters that ever practiced on mankind. Space is comparatively annihilated. What, am I to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant of their relations to their fellow men, to beat them with sticks, to flay their flesh with the lash, to load their limbs with irons, to hunt them with dogs, to sell them at auction, to sunder their families, to knock out their teeth, to burn their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? Do you think Douglass would be surprised to learn that Americans are reciting his words nearly 170 years later? Fellow Citizens, I am not wanting in respect for the fathers of this republic. We may finally be thinking about creating a commission to study the possibility of reparationsas with all deliberate speed, the American way of tackling a problem takes so much time and patienceand for this we can be thankful. We feel the pain and anguish ever more severely and it is much harder to find hope for the future. You could instruct me in regard to them. President Lincoln did issue the Emancipation Proclamation six months later but even after the wars end, Douglass continued to use the Fifth of July to draw attention to the nations track record on the idea celebrated on the Fourth. Interview was lightly edited for clarity and length. I trust the people of America," Harris said to the crowd. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future, Douglass said. Last year, Singapore's GDP grew 3.6%. What is the main message of Douglass's speech? How circumspect, exact and proportionate were all their movements! Knowledge was then confined and enjoyed by the privileged few, and the multitude walked on in mental darkness. Although primarily remembered for pointing out the hypocrisy of Independence Day in a nation that condoned the enslavement of millions of people, the speech also includes an interesting passage on the impact of globalization. I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. In that instrument I hold there is neither warrant, license, nor sanction of the hateful thing; but, interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT. "I will not equivocate; I will not excuse"; I will use the severest language I can command; and yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart a slaveholder, shall not confess to be right and just. But I differ from those who charge this baseness on the framers of the Constitution of the United States. I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. I scout the idea that the question of the constitutionality or unconstitutionality of slavery is not a question for the people. Is it that slavery is not divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? It does not often happen to a nation to raise, at one time, such a number of truly great men. What did he say and in what context? The above audio reading by actor Ossie Davis can be used alongside the full text of Frederick Douglass's speech delivered on July 5, 1852 at Corinthian Hall to the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society in Rochester, New York. And the contradiction of Americas just ideals and unjust realities endures, too. Above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, today, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? I have been thinking a lot about these two and have discovered that it is also the 400th anniversary of the first instance of representative government in Jamestown. At the time of the delivery of this speech, Douglass had been living in Rochester, New York for several years editing a weekly abolitionist newspaper. Read its preamble, consider its purposes. It is the antagonistic force in your government, the only thing that seriously disturbs and endangers your Union. Panel on dispossession of African Americans says burying truth keeps Black Americans dispossessed, Legal scholar and historian puts the push to remove Confederate statues in context, Members of the community share memories, plans, hopes for the holiday, Meredith Max Hodges and Geraldine Acua-Sunshine to assume leadership roles for 2023-24, We need individual events like reading Douglass, but we also need to be thinking about ways to extend this conversation over the long term., Happiness is not a destination Happiness is the way, Expanding our understanding of gut feelings, Gen Z, millennials need to be prepared to fight for change, What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?, Rewriting history to include all of it this time. How does he show that everyone in America, North and South, views enslaved Africans as human beings. He who will, intelligently, lay down his life for his country, is a man whom it is not in human nature to despise. That year will come, and freedoms reign, Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners of the globe. Overseers announce new president, vice chair. A Nation's Story: "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" Fully appreciating the hardship to be encountered, firmly believing in the right of their cause, honorably inviting the scrutiny of an on-looking world, reverently appealing to heaven to attest their sincerity, soundly comprehending the solemn responsibility they were about to assume, wisely measuring the terrible odds against them, your fathers, the fathers of this republic, did, most deliberately, under the inspiration of a glorious patriotism, and with a sublime faith in the great principles of justice and freedom, lay deep the corner-stone of the national superstructure, which has risen and still rises in grandeur around you. "The arm of the Lord is not shortened," and the doom of slavery is certain. Rhetorical Analysis Of Frederick Douglass Speech Uncle Toms Cabin had just been published that spring and was taking the country by storm. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. I am not that man. For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light? Douglass's voluminous writings and speeches reveal a man who believed fiercely in the ideals on which America was founded, but understoodwith the scars to prove itthat democracy would . They are not part of the original. 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?, Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions! The manhood of the slave is conceded. Why does Douglass appeal to the Constitution in the last section of the speech? Neither group had any idea what would be going on when they happened by and I was truly heartened that both groups seemed to be intrigued and listening closely. It is actually quite longwe use an abridged version for our readingsbut despite its length it is at once riveting and concise. The message of Frederick Douglasss 1852 speech on the contradiction of Americas just ideals and unjust realities endures. This Fourth July is yours, not mine. They may also rise in wrath and fury, and bear away, on their angry waves, the accumulated wealth of years of toil and hardship. My original thought was a public reading prior to the holiday, which would prompt people to incorporate the speech or a discussion of its meaning in their holiday observations, whether in the back yard or the local library. Fellow-citizens! What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?, Watch: A Conversation with Ta-Nehisi Coates, Oprah Winfrey, Media Mogul and Philanthropist, National Museum of African American History & Culture, A Nation's Story: What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?. To what other elements in the American political tradition does he appeal? Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. Hard-hit sectors are recovering rapidly - tourism and hospitality establishments are back in business. speech was delivered on July 5, 1852 as an address to the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society in Rochester, New York. Our ability to communicate has led to much greater organizing and mobilization. The freedom gained is yours; and you, therefore, may properly celebrate this anniversary. Harvard Law School provides unparalleled opportunities to study law with extraordinary colleagues in a rigorous, vibrant, and collaborative environment. ', But such is not the state of the case. At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. GAZETTE: What is the historical setting for this speech, and why did Douglass focus on the Fourth of July? The time for such argument is passed. God speed the hour, the glorious hour, Two years before Douglass' famed speech, the U.S. government passed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which required runaway slaves to be returned to their owners. On July 4th, 1852, he gave a speech to citizens of the United States. Standing there identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July! Douglass message about America struggling to live up to the lofty goals it set for itself at the founding continues to be relevant, says Blight. Harvard Law Today: Can you tell me a little bit about Douglass speech? At the time Douglass spoke, Blight says, the opportunity was ripe for a lecture on the moral crisis. It is the birthday of your National Independence, and of your political freedom. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder, he said. You may well cherish the memory of such men. I shall not presume to dwell at length on the associations that cluster about this day. Although it has also facilitated the spread of hateful ideas and untruths, I suspect Douglass, who understood perhaps better than anyone in the 19th century the power of images, would have reveled in our ability to capture and convey video of events. Many historians consider this effort to be Douglass's finest oration, and arguably one of the most powerful American political speeches ever written. The event is co-convened by the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race & Justice at Harvard Law School, Community Change, Inc., the Museum of African American History (Boston and Nantucket), and MassHumanities. My subject, then, fellow-citizens, is American slavery. I can to-day take up the plaintive lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people! He was invited to give a fourth of July speech by the Ladies Anti-Slavery Society of Rochester. Frederick Douglass was a freed slave in the 1800's who was famous for his ability to read and write, uncommon of a black man at the time. Indeed, in one of the most timeless passages in the speech, Douglass insists that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July, adding as if speaking today, 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. Americans! 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 hypocrisya thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. I take it, therefore, that it is not presumption in a private citizen to form an opinion of that instrument. In every clime be understood, Not least since the racism that made slavery endures. In Douglass' speech, his tone mainly appeals to emotions. At the time of the delivery of this speech, Douglass had been living in Rochester, New York for several years editing a weekly abolitionist newspaper. The freedom gained is yours; and you, therefore, may properly celebrate this anniversary. With head, and heart, and hand Ill strive, Everyone is welcome to read; this event is free and open to the public. Why is this speech still relevant today? And let me warn you that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation whose crimes, towering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrevocable ruin! "So don't get in our way because if you do, we're going to stand up, we're going to organize and we're going to speak up and . When the Ladies Anti-Slavery Society of Rochester, N.Y., invited Douglass to give a July 4 speech in 1852, Douglass opted to speak on July 5 instead. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. During the Civil War he worked tirelessly for the emancipation ofenslaved African Americans and duringthe decades followingthe war, he was arguably the most influential African American leader in the nation. He wrote a glowing letter of encouragement to Harriet Tubman, which served as the preface to Sarah Bradfords 1869 biography about Tubmans life. He implored the Rochester, N.Y., audience to think about the ongoing oppression of Black Americans during a holiday celebrating freedom. What is his opinion of the American Founders? "For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder," he said. Frederick Douglass "What to the Slave" - Lesson Plan | Learning to
what is the main message of douglass's speech?