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 — 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 the United States, at this very hour.

An Excerpt From “The Meaning Of July Fourth For The Negro” By Frederick Douglass, 1852 (via thenoobyorker)

Woke up this morning most instantaneously not with a feeling of celebration but rather a most captivating question of “independence.” Its history, its intended connotation, its reality— or lack thereof. So glad to have stumbled upon Frederick Douglass’ words as I have been searching for a written account of them since I read about abolitionist influencers in U.S. history. Though it has already been over a century since these words have been spoken, its truth still reigns today, for all the oppressed still seeking “independence” in and from this nation.

(via miswritten)