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5 July 1852
Editor's Note
Please read
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Meeting sponsored by the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society, Rochester
Hall, Rochester, N.Y. To illustrate the full
shame of slavery, Douglass delivered a speech that took aim at the pieties
of the nation -- the cherished memories of its revolution, its principles
of liberty, and its moral and religious foundation. The Fourth
of July, a day celebrating freedom, was used by Douglass to remind his audience
of liberty's unfinished business.
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| At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument,
is needed. O! had I the ability, and could I reach the nation's
ear, I would, to-day, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting
reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is
needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm,
the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened;
the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation
must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes
against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.
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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 denunciations 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 these United States, at this very hour. Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.
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Editor's Note: Frederick Douglass is truly a "hero proved in liberating
strife" and a patriot whose dream has seen "beyond the years."
WAKE UP AMERICA!WAKE UP PLANET EARTH!!!Don't worry about the "Eyes of Texas" -
The Eyes of GOD are upon YOU!!!
Copyright © 2000-2008
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Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
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RACE IN AMERICA -
By Condoleezza Rice, Ph.D. Question: Madame Secretary… Secretary Rice: America doesn’t have an easy time dealing with race. I sit in my office and the portrait immediately over my shoulder is Thomas Jefferson, because he was my first predecessor. He was the first secretary of state. And sometimes I think to myself, what would he think — (laughter) — a Black woman secretary of state as his…successor, 65 times removed? What would he think that the last two successors have been Black Americans? And so, obviously, when this country was founded, the words that were enshrined in all of our great documents and that have been such an inspiration to people around the world, for the likes of V aclav Havel, associate themselves with those documents. They didn’t have meaning for an overwhelming element of our founding population. And Black Americans were a founding population. Africans and Europeans came here and founded this country together — Europeans by choice and Africans in chains. And that’s not a very pretty reality of our founding, and I think that particular birth defect makes it hard for us to confront it, hard for us to talk about it, and hard for us to realize that it has continuing relevance for who we are today. But that relevance comes in two strains. On the one hand, there’s the relevance that descendents of slaves, therefore, did not get much of a head start. And I think you continue to see some of the effects of that. On the other hand, the tremendous efforts of many, many, many people, some of whom, whose names we will never know and some individuals’ names who we do know, to be impatient with this country for not fulfilling its own principles, has led us down a path that has put African-Americans in positions and places that, I think, nobody would have even thought at the time that Dr. King was assassinated. And so we deal daily with this contradiction, this paradox about America, that on the one hand, the birth defect continues to have effects on our country, and indeed, on the discourse and effects on perhaps the deepest thoughts that people hold; and on the other hand, the enormous progress that has been made by the efforts of Blacks and whites together, to finally fulfill those principles…
The above remarks are excerpted from an interview by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice with The Washington Times editorial board, March 27, 2008.
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