The Meaning of the Fourth of July for the *****" by Frederick Douglass.?

Question

What was Douglass' argument? What do you think and what are your opinions about it?

Answer 1

Douglass basic argument was that talk of freedom and independence was meaningless while millions of people were bound in slavery.

It's a tremendous speech. Read it here:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h2927t.html

"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."
.... wow, that is still powerful, 150 years later.