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Frederick Douglass took his spot at the podium. The Ladies Anti-Slavery Society of Rochester, N.Y. had invited him to speak for a Fourth of July celebration. What did they expect from Douglass – an ex-slave – on this patriotic day of “freedom?”
Douglass decided he would rather speak on July 5th, the day after. It was beneath him to speak on the actual holiday! He saw the hypocrisy of it all, and was finally ready to speak his mind.
“What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July?” He asked. “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 sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless.”
Douglass said this in front of a white audience, still fuming from their Independence Day festivities! In a week like this, where white Americans congratulate themselves on being a “free country,” Douglass wanted to flip the script. Freedom and slavery can not co-exist.
White Supremacy seeks to make the white narrative and the white perspective the only one that matters, even when it doesn’t make sense! Frederick Douglass countered the dominant narrative, and had the courage to center the honest Black perspective – and paved the way for us to do so today.