LAD #16: Douglass's "5th of July" Speech

Frederick Douglass starts off his speech by asking the questions of to what extent are the rights that the white population holds extended to the black or slave population. He wonders who there is that could be so wronged and evil to be against such freedom and joy that is coupled with the abolition of slavery. An irony is provoked in this speech, an irony on how he was called upon to speak about the great independence celebrated in July of our nation, when in fact its independence does not reach to him and his demographic. He even compares this woe to that of the Jews leaving Jerusalem and the despair they felt along the way. His disgust in the joyous cheers of independence is astounding and the American map "never looked blacker to me than on this Fourth of July!", in an ironic sense. He senses that America has also be contradictory and false, in the past, present, and seemingly the future. He will remain movingly adamant in his stance against the American atrocity. He states that he is fighting for the life of men without being made into submissive brutes, while this population is free to their own endeavors and joyous celebrates false "liberty". He concludes that the Fourth of July to a slave is nothing more than a despicable lie and a false sense of egalitarianism that is supposedly a base to a wonderful "democracy". He believes America is not rivaled in its brutality and violation of humanity anywhere on the globe.