‘What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July?’ Douglass demanded in 1852 

Frederick Douglass circa 1852, when he was in his mid-30s. (Samuel J. Miller/Art Institute of Chicago)

By Gillian Brockell

“The papers and placards say that I am to deliver a 4th [of] July oration.”

So began Frederick Douglass on the platform of Corinthian Hall in Rochester, N.Y. It was a Monday, the day after the Fourth of July in 1852, and he was speaking to a packed room of 500 to 600 people hosted by the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society. Douglass was about 35 years old (he never knew his actual birth date) and had escaped enslavement in Maryland 14 years earlier.

Frederick Douglass statue torn down in Rochester, N.Y., on anniversary of his famous Fourth of July speech

Although by this time he was world-renowned for his speeches, he began modestly, reminding the crowd that he had begun his life enslaved and had no formal education.

“With little experience and with less learning, I have been able to throw my thoughts hastily and imperfectly together,” he began, “and trusting to your patient and generous indulgence, I will proceed to lay them before you.”

Over the next hour and a half, Douglass made what is now thought to be among the finest speeches ever delivered: “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” He quoted Shakespeare, Longfellow, Jefferson and the Old Testament. He certainly bellowed in moments, exclaiming and anguishing in others. He painted vivid pictures of exalted patriots and the wretched of the earth.

First, he posited that while 76 was old for a man, it was young for a nation. America was but an adolescent, he said, and that was a good thing. That meant there was hope of its maturing vs. being forever stuck in its ways.

He wove through the familiar tale of taxation without representation, tea parties and declarations of independence. “Oppression makes a wise man mad,” he said. “Your fathers were wise men, and if they did not go mad, they became restive under this treatment.”

Perhaps at this point it was imperceptible to his audience that Douglass repeatedly said “yours” and not “ours.” Did they notice the hint of what was to come?

Frederick Douglass delivered a Lincoln reality check at Emancipation Memorial unveiling

But his business was with the present, not the past, he said, and here his critique began to build.

“Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here today? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? 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?”

...

“The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth [of] July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day?”

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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, today, 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.

“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.”

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“Behold the practical operation of this internal slave-trade, the American slave-trade, sustained by American politics and America religion. Here you will see men and women reared like swine for the market.

“You know what is a swine-drover? I will show you a man-drover. They inhabit all our Southern States. They perambulate the country, and crowd the highways of the nation, with droves of human stock. You will see one of these human flesh-jobbers, armed with pistol, whip and bowie knife, driving a company of a hundred men, women, and children, from the Potomac to the slave market at New Orleans. These wretched people are to be sold singly, or in lots, to suit purchasers. They are food for the cotton-field, and the deadly sugar-mill.

“Mark the sad procession, as it moves wearily along, and the inhuman wretch who drives them. Hear his savage yells and his blood-chilling oaths, as he hurries on his affrighted captives! There, see the old man, with locks thinned and gray. Cast one glance, if you please, upon that young mother, whose shoulders are bare to the scorching sun, her briny tears falling on the brow of the babe in her arms. See, too, that girl of thirteen, weeping, yes! weeping, as she thinks of the mother from whom she has been torn!

“The drove moves tardily. Heat and sorrow have nearly consumed their strength; suddenly you hear a quick snap, like the discharge of a rifle; the fetters clank, and the chain rattles simultaneously; your ears are saluted with a scream, that seems to have torn its way to the center of your soul! The crack you heard, was the sound of the slave-whip; the scream you heard, was from the woman you saw with the babe. Her speed had faltered under the weight of her child and her chains! that gash on her shoulder tells her to move on.

“Follow the drove to New Orleans. Attend the auction; see men examined like horses; see the forms of women rudely and brutally exposed to the shocking gaze of American slave-buyers. See this drove sold and separated forever; and never forget the deep, sad sobs that arose from that scattered multitude. Tell me citizens, WHERE, under the sun, you can witness a spectacle more fiendish and shocking. Yet this is but a glance at the American slave-trade, as it exists, at this moment, in the ruling part of the United States.”

He also indicted the American church, “with fractional exceptions,” for its “indifference” to the suffering of the enslaved, its willingness to obey laws so clearly immoral. It was a theme echoed a century later by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in his “Letter From Birmingham Jail.”

The church, Douglass charged, “esteems sacrifice above mercy; psalm-singing above right doing; solemn meetings above practical righteousness. A worship that can be conducted by persons who refuse to give shelter to the houseless, to give bread to the hungry, clothing to the naked, and who enjoin obedience to a law forbidding these acts of mercy, is a curse, not a blessing to mankind.”

The Statue of Liberty was created to celebrate freed slaves, not immigrants, its new museum recounts

He turns to the Constitution, and here he defends it and raises it up as a pathway to liberation for the enslaved.

“In that instrument I hold there is neither warrant, license, nor sanction of the hateful thing [slavery]; but, interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT. Read its preamble, consider its purposes. Is slavery among them? ... [L]et me ask, if it be not somewhat singular that, if the Constitution were intended to be, by its framers and adopters, a slave-holding instrument, why neither slavery, slaveholding, nor slave can anywhere be found in it. 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?”

That is why, he said, despite the “dark picture” he painted, “I do not despair of this country.”

“There are forces in operation, which must inevitably work the downfall of slavery. ‘The arm of the Lord is not shortened,’ and the doom of slavery is certain,” he says. “I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope.”

When he finished speaking and took his seat, “there was a universal burst of applause,” according to one newspaper account. Within a few minutes he had promised to publish his words as a pamphlet.

Douglass was right. The forces that would end slavery in little more than a decade were in operation, and he was one of those forces.

But he couldn’t see what would follow: sharecropping and Jim Crow, redlining and Bull Connor, incarceration rates and George Floyd. Would Douglass still figure us an adolescent nation, with the youthful hope of transformation — or something else?

Photographed by Acielle / Style du Monde

Sixteen months after the pandemic hit Europe, the fall 2021 couture shows mark our semi-official “return” to live and in-person fashion shows. Many of us will still be viewing the collections online—we’re extra excited about Pieter Mulier’s debut at Alaïa and Demna Gvasalia’s first couture collection for Balenciaga—but for those lucky enough to attend IRL, the inevitable question is: What to wear? Will editors and influencers dust off the runway pieces and heels in the back of their closets, or will they be influenced by the casual, experimental looks we saw outside the menswear shows? Style du Monde’s Acielle is on the ground in Paris to find out. Scroll through her latest street style photos below, and come back for her daily updates.

In November of 1774 — six months before shots were fired at Lexington and Concord — James Madison reported that enslaved people in a neighboring Virginia county had met to choose a leader for when the British troops arrived.

As American patriots prepared to wage a war for their liberty from the British crown, the enslaved weighed which side offered the best prospect for their personal freedom, acting accordingly and dramatically.

Far from being bystanders in the Declaration of Independence, Black people in America — free and enslaved — played a pivotal part in the leadup to its signing and a defining role in how we view that document today.

“If you love the Declaration of Independence, you have to thank Black people,” says Woody Holton, a history professor at the University of South Carolina and the son of former Virginia Gov. Linwood Holton.

Long estranged from this holiday born during my ancestors’ enslavement, I embraced the new Juneteenth national holiday last month as our true independence day.

But my phone interview with Holton has me viewing the Fourth of July with more pride and less detachment. Our ancestors’ fight for freedom presaged America’s and gave true meaning to the sanctimonious pronouncements of enslavers.

The truth: The nation’s founders had little interest in breaking free of Britain in the fall of 1774, Holton said. They merely wished to “turn back the clock” to a dozen years earlier, before a more aggressive Parliament imposed such irritants as the Stamp Act and tea tax. Enslavers in the colonies — eager to bolster the domestic slave trade and fearful of a violent rebellion — were unhappy with Britain’s continued participation in the transatlantic slave trade. “They had it in their head that people born in Africa, who had tasted freedom, were more dangerous than those born here.”

The enslaved on this continent were paying attention to the brewing beef between the colonists and the crown.

“Before whites are fighting each other, enslaved people could see that white people were screaming at each other, and likely to be fighting soon. And they said, ‘This is it. This is our opportunity,’” Holton said.

In the South, they gambled that the British were more benevolent than the colonial enslavers they knew all too well. By April 1775, the enslaved in Virginia were knocking on the door of the governor’s palace in Williamsburg, offering their services as British soldiers in exchange for freedom.

Gov. Lord Dunmore, an enslaver, “turned them away, and said if they came back, he would whip them,” Holton said.

But they persisted.

When Joseph Harris, an enslaved harbor pilot, escaped captivity, he was welcomed by a British ship captain who needed Harris’ skills and took him onto his crew. Months later, Harris would take part in the October 1775 Battle of Hampton.

Dunmore’s belligerence toward enlisting the enslaved shifted as relations worsened between him and the colonists and he needed to bolster his ranks.

He formed his “Ethiopian Regiment” of Black people who had escaped enslavement to side with the British. On Nov. 15, 1775 at the Battle of Kemp’s Landing (now part of Virginia Beach), this regiment of Black Loyalists, with “Liberty to Slaves” inscribed on their uniforms, defeated an all-white Princess Anne County militia whose commander was captured by one of the men he had enslaved, Holton said.

The next day, Dunmore “did exactly what Lincoln did: He waited for a victory to issue his emancipation proclamation,” Holton said. “It said, ‘If you can get to me, and are willing and able to bear arms for your king, I will free you.”

Thousands took him up on the offer.

“White Southerners like Jefferson and Washington might never have declared independence from Britain had it not been for the activism of Black Virginians, and that’s true on the Southern-wide scale,” said Holton, whose father’s legacy as governor during the early 1970s was to usher Virginia out of its segregationist past.

Indeed, an infuriated Archibald Cary of Chesterfield County wrote: “Men of all ranks resent the pointing of a dagger to their Throats thru the hands of their slaves.”

Ultimately, the Declaration of Independence would include this passage about King George III: “He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us.”

That’s a reference to the enslaved, Holton said.

Meanwhile, up North — where Holton says Black people generally cast their lot with the Patriots — the 1st Rhode Island Regiment enlisted the enslaved within its ranks. And a free Black soldier named Lemuel Haynes exerted his influence on how the Declaration of Independence would be forever viewed.

The founders were intent on penning a document of secession from Britain and telegraphing to France their desire for military aid, which would not arrive for another two years.
But Haynes — an indentured servant until he was 21 — viewed the founders’ words through a different lens.

In 1776, he wrote “Liberty Further Extended: Or Free Thoughts on the Illegality of Slave-keeping,” a pamphlet that opened with what would become the most memorable and aspirational passage of the Declaration of Independence: We hold these truths to be self-Evident, that all men are created Equal, that they are Endowed By their Creator with Ceartain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happyness.

“He shifted the spotlight,” Holton said. “It was African Americans and whites who opposed slavery, and then it was women’s rights activists, who transformed the meaning of the Declaration of Independence from a states rights document to a human rights document.”

America does not emphasize this history, in part because of the foundational role of slavery, a chapter this nation tries mightily to minimize. We note the hypocrisy of enslaver Patrick Henry’s “liberty or death” speech, but don’t dwell terribly long on it.

This telling of events by Holton, who cites African American historian Benjamin Quarles’ 1961 book, “The Negro in the American Revolution,” also gives Black people — including the enslaved — an agency that white supremacy does not abide.

Generations of school kids were poisoned with a propaganda that depicted Black people as content in their oppression and nonparticipants in their freedom.

Right-wing forces are attempting to keep out of our classrooms discussions of America’s systemic racism, and reject the idea that our nation is built on a foundation of oppression. But the issue of slavery was not only pivotal in the Civil War, but the Revolutionary War as well. Perhaps if generations of Americans had been taught a more honest version of history, we wouldn’t have insurrectionists attempting to torch our democracy while waving U.S. and Confederate flags interchangeably.

Those self-evident truths in our founding document are under assault from a barrage of hate and lies. To preserve and enhance what we celebrate today, we must declare our independence from injustice, bigotry and hate.

Let’s resolve to create a nation worthy of its most eloquent words.

Here’s why it’s a big deal that it’s finally a federal holiday.

Juneteenth is now a federal holiday. This week, the Senate and House voted in favor of commemorating the day that the last enslaved people in the U.S. found out they were free, and on Thursday afternoon, President Biden signed the bill into law.

June 19 goes by a number of names — Black Independence Day, Texas Emancipation Day — but to many Black Americans, it represents freedom. A portmanteau of “June” and “nineteenth,” Juneteenth marks the day in 1865 when Union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, and the enslaved people living there learned of their freedom — more than two years after President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. As such, the day tells a broader story of how emancipation was woefully delayed for Black people enslaved deep in the Confederacy. 

For a long time, though, the holiday slipped under the radar, often dismissed as a “Black holiday,” not something meant for the general public. (One Gallup poll conducted in May found that Black Americans were far more likely than white or Hispanic Americans to say they knew “a lot” or “some” about the day.) In fact, Juneteenth didn’t really become part of the national conversation until last year, after a series of Black Americans were killed in highly publicized cases — and after then-President Donald Trump falsely took credit for popularizing the day in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, widely politicizing the issue. 

Most states and Washington, D.C., already recognized Juneteenth as a holiday or day of observance, but only a handful considered it a paid holiday for state employees. Last year, for example, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo issued an executive order to make it a holiday for state workers, while farther south, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam did the same. Similarly, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio declared Juneteenth an official holiday for city departments and schools, and in Oregon, the Portland City Council made June 19 a paid holiday for city employees as well. Some businesses also give employees the day off: Twitter and the National Football League have both declared Juneteenth company holidays, but most companies have yet to follow suit. 

Juneteenth recognized by more states, companies as a holiday

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It’s also not clear whether every state will honor Juneteenth as a paid holiday for state workers since neither Congress nor the president had ever declared a holiday binding all 50 states and some Americans aren’t sure whether Juneteenth should even be a federal holiday. In the May Gallup poll, 40 percent said as much, though that may be due in part to a lack of familiarity with the day (28 percent of Americans said they knew “nothing at all” about Juneteenth.) That said, the latest bill’s passage through Congress is still historic. For starters, because of how costly and politically difficult it is to create federal holidays, there hasn’t been a new one since Congress passed a bill in 1983 to establish Martin Luther King Jr. Day. But it’s also a recognition of racial progress that challenges what celebrations have meant in this country.

“Juneteenth challenges a narrative about America’s founding and its treatment of Black Americans overall,” said Andre M. Perry, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “[T]he emancipation of Black Americans should be celebrated, without question, because it represents a monumental step in freedom for all Americans. But racism keeps us from seeing that reality.”

Indeed, some lawmakers pushed false narratives about Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy to prevent the observance of his birthday as a national holiday. One senator even went as far to claim that King espoused “action-oriented Marxism” and “radical political” views in an attempt to kill the bill creating a holiday in his honor. It took over a decade for Congress to pass the bill, and it wasn’t until 2000 that all 50 states quit boycotting the holiday. “[King]’s a figure in the iconic popular sense that allows us to feel pretty good about ourselves,” said Brenna W. Greer, a history professor at Wellesley College, explaining why states eventually came around to recognizing Martin Luther King Jr. Day. At this point, though, a large part of his legacy has been whitewashed to acknowledge only his non-violent, integrationist activism.

In other words, Martin Luther King Jr. Day symbolizes the best of what America is even if it doesn’t reflect the whole story. Juneteenth, though, is a different case, as it represents delayed freedom, “and for that reason,” Greer said, “it’s very loaded and maybe even threatening as a holiday.”

Of course, we don’t know yet whether states will push back on Juneteenth as some did with Martin Luther King Jr. Day, but polls do indicate a divide over who knows about Juneteenth and who thinks we should celebrate it. Last year, when senators proposed legislation to make Juneteenth a federal holiday in response to protests against police violence and racial injustice following the killings of Black Americans such as Atatiana Jefferson, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, almost half of Americans surveyed in a Harris Poll said they were “not very aware” or “not at all aware” of what Juneteenth was. There’s a racial divide in who thinks Juneteenth should be a holiday, too — 69 percent of Black adults compared with 39 percent of Hispanic adults and 27 percent of white adults in the May Gallup survey. The pollster also found a pretty sharp partisan divide on both awareness of the meaning of Juneteenth (47 percent of Democrats knew “a lot” or “some” about the holiday versus 23 percent of Republicans) and whether to make Juneteenth a holiday (57 percent of Democrats were in favor of doing so versus just 7 percent of Republicans). And given some states’ ongoing battles to ban critical race theory — and, in some cases, any discussion of systemic racism — in public schools, it’s possible that Juneteenth gets sucked into the larger cultural wars, too.

For now, though, Juneteenth’s status as the latest federal holiday is a significant milestone, considering the importance the day holds for many Black Americans. Several people I spoke to said they were already participating in traditional Juneteenth events like gathering for cookouts, going to block parties and festivals, and attending parades — including some who said they’re getting the day off work now, too. For others celebrating Juneteenth, the day centers around civic engagement and education. Claudia Zapata, a Democratic congressional candidate in Texas, told me her team will be registering voters during a charity cook-off on Saturday. Even several white Americans, like 20-year-old Jason Boghosian, a student at the University of Connecticut who works in the food-services industry, told me he’s using this Juneteenth as an opportunity to “learn some crucial Black history,” and noted that becoming educated on these things is how some white people do their version of celebrating.

“Juneteenth is a historic and symbolic representation of our liberation from institutionalized and legislative slavery and oppression,” said Jamarr Brown, the president of the Black Austin Democrats who is participating in a Juneteenth parade this weekend. “For me, with Juneteenth, it’s very important to recognize that there is still institutional racism that exists in our system. The day reminds me that, decades later, we still have work to do.”

BY CASSANDRA PINTRO

Fashion folk were out in force in Sydney this week, where they attended the city’s IRL resort shows. It’s winter Down Under, but still warm enough for bare legs, and street style looks that translate to summer dressing here, like flowing dresses and still of-the-moment tie-dye. When it comes to trends, it’s more fun when you don’t have to pick just one. 

Below, 4 summer trends to try.

Flowy Dresses

Photographed by Dan Roberts

Photographed by Dan Roberts

Photographed by Dan Roberts

Photographed by Dan Roberts

Photographed by Dan Roberts

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Cut Outs

Photographed by Dan Roberts

Photographed by Dan Roberts

Photographed by Dan Roberts

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Tie-Dye

Photographed by Dan Roberts

Photographed by Dan Roberts

Photographed by Dan Roberts

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Layering With Net

Photographed by Dan Roberts

Photographed by Dan Roberts

Photographed by Dan Roberts