July Fourth is held up as a day to celebrate the struggle for freedom and independence. But the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass, himself a former slave and the editor of the abolitionist newspaper The North Star, dared to challenge the exaltation of the holiday. Here is part of his remarkable address to the Rochester (New York) Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society.
Danny Glover reads Frederick Douglass, “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro” (July 5, 1851) at the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center in Los Angeles, California on October 5, 2005.
Danny Glover reads Frederick Douglass, “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro” (July 5, 1852) from Voices of a People’s History on Vimeo.
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