GDG- your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license

[Dennis Lawrence]

On July 5, 1852, Douglass gave a speech at an event commemorating the 
signing of the Declaration of Independence, held at Rochester's 
Corinthian Hall. It was biting oratory, in which the speaker told his 
audience, "This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I 
must mourn." And he asked them, "Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, 
by asking me to speak to-day?"

 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
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.


http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h2927.html