 We'll come on in and welcome, please find a seat. We are going to get started in just a minute, so please come on in, find a seat. Thank you for joining us. It's a very, very happy 4th of July to all of you. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. My name is Missy McNatt and I'm in the Education and Public Programs team here at the National Archives. A very, very warm welcome and it is warm outside to both our in-person audience and to our audience on YouTube. In just a minute, you will meet Frederick Douglass, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. Frederick Douglass is portrayed by Darius Wallace, actor, writer, and producer. Frederick Douglass was born a slave in Maryland in 1817 or 1818. There was no birth certificate, so it's unclear which year it is. And he escaped to the north in 1838. He became one of the most prominent abolitionists before the Civil War and he continued to fight and battle for civil rights for all black people after emancipation. Today, July 4th, 2023, we celebrate our birth as an independent nation and the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness was promised by our founding fathers in the Declaration of Independence. But it is important to remember that a significant portion of the population in 1776 were enslaved and had no liberties. On July 5th of 1852, at Rochester, New York, Frederick Douglass gave a keynote address at an Independence Day celebration and asked the question, what to the slave is the 4th of July? So we will hear from Frederick Douglass and he will include both passages from the speech as well as information about his life. And after his performance, we will have a question and answer session with him. There are mics on both sides, so feel free to ask a question. So now, let us join Frederick Douglass as he shares his stories from his life and passages from the speech. What to the slave is the 4th of July? Oh does this way down often been utterly astonished since I've come north to find person speaking of the singing among slaves as evidence of their happiness and contentment. It is impossible to conceive a greater mistake, for the slave sings most when they are most unhappy. The song of the slave represents the sorrow of his heart and he is relieved by them as an aching heart is relieved from its tears, friends and fellow citizens. He who could address this audience without a quailing sensation has stronger nerves than I have. I do not ever remember to have appeared before anyone more shrinkingly nor with greater distrust of my abilities than I do this day. The fact of the matter is, ladies and gentlemen, the distance between this platform and the slave plantation from which I escaped is considerable and the difficulties in getting from the latter to the former are by no means slight. That I am here today to me is a matter of astonishment as well as of gratitude. With little experience and less learning, I've managed to place my thoughts hastily and imperfectly together and trusting to your patient and generous indulgence I shall proceed to lay them before you. This for the purpose of this celebration is the Fourth of July. It is the anniversary of your national independence and political freedom it is to you what the Passover was to the emancipated people of God. It carries your minds back to that day and to the act of your great deliverance. May the Patriot not hope that high lessons of wisdom and of justice and of truth shall yet guide her and her destiny. Whether the nation older, the Patriot's heart might be sadder, the Reformer's brow heavier, America's future might be shrouded in gloom and the hope of its profits go out in sorrow but there is consolation in the thought that America is young. Friends, pardon me and allow me to ask, why am I called upon here to speak to you today? What have I or anyone I represent to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and natural justice embodied in that declaration of independence extended to us? Am I therefore to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude resulting from your independence to us, word to God, for both your sakes and ours? An affirmative answer would truthfully be returned to the question then would my labor be light and my burden easy and delightful for who would not lend his voice to the hallelujahs of a nation's jubilee when the chains of servitude have been torn from its limb but such is not the state of the case. I say with a sad sense of disparity between us, I am not included within the pale of your glorious anniversary. Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us, the rich inheritance of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness bequeathed by your forefathers as shared by you, not me. The sunlight that brought life and health to you brought strikes and death to me. This Fourth of July is yours, not ours. You may rejoice, we must mourn, and to drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems is inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you intend to mock me, fellow citizens, by calling me here to speak to you today by the ripples of Balabalon? Yay, we sat down. Yay, we wept when we remembered Zion. We hung our hops on the willows in the mist thereof, for they who led as the way captive required of us a song. And those who wasted us required of us mercy, saying, sing to us the Lord's song. But how should we sing the Lord's song in a strange land? Oh, Jerusalem, if I do not remember thee, may my right hand forget her cunning, and if I forget thee, may my tongue cleave to the root of my mouth beyond and above your tumultuous joy. I hear the mournful wailing of millions whose chains grievous yesterday or today rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not remember the bleeding children of sorrow, may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the root of my mouth to forget them. To pass lightly over their wrongs and chime in with the popular theme is treason, most scandalous and shocking. It would make me a reproach before God and the world. My subject, then, fellow citizens, is American slavery. We are gods going to trouble. Born in Talbot County, Maryland, my mother was Harriet Bailey. My father was, I'm not sure who my father was. I didn't see my mother more than four or five times, and that was at night. She worked on another plantation, and she would walk 20 miles to hold me at night and was gone before daybreak. I received the news of her death with much of the same emotions as I should have received at the death of a stranger, and it was strange. I was raised by my grandmother, Miss Betsy Bailey, an old settler of sorts. She was held in higher steam, far higher than most colored persons in slave states. Oh, I don't know if because I was too old for field service, or because I so faithfully performed my duties early in life. I don't know. All I know is I enjoy the high privilege of living in a cabin separate from the slave quarter with no other burden and taking care of all the children around the plantation. You know the plantation was so polled that even the slave masters children had to come to get old grandma's gifts. Yes, I was famous for making nets for catching fish, and not only was I famous for catching the nets, I was also famous for catching the fish. We would be out there sometimes, oh, half day, while it was said some of the slave masters be out there all day. Even they had to come to get them some fish to feed their families. Yes, I took care of all the children around the plantation, including little Freddie. Freddie, Freddie, Freddie, Freddie, if you don't get your high yellow behind up here to be a cold day and lose of its back yard if I don't beat all the blackness up on you, you've been playing in a chicken coop, haven't you? Didn't I tell you not to play in a chicken coop? Didn't I tell you not to play in the chicken coop? Now you get in there right now, you get grandma's nets so we can go out and go fishing. Yay, being a black boy, I don't get in trouble with the white boys getting in trouble for no sir. I don't get in trouble for eating my tablecloth wrong because we eat our meals on the floor. I don't get in trouble for getting my clothes dirty because my clothes are already dirty. I ain't got no mama. I ain't got no daddy. I get to be as bad as I want to be. I get to play with the roosters. I get to play with the horses. I get to play with the cows. And you get to play with the chickens. I love eating chickens. I can walk like a chicken. I can talk like a chicken. I can peck my neck in the ground like a chicken. And I get to eat the chickens. I run while they call me a little chicken friend, but my grandma don't like it though. She says she didn't want me to go be a chicken who's a scaredy cat. I don't go be a chicken who's a scaredy cat because I don't like cats. But I love chickens. And one day I was running for my grandmama and she pulled out this brown leather belt and she began flashing at me like lightning, but she couldn't catch me though because playing with chickens taught me how to run fast. I'd run through her legs. I'd jump over her shoulders. I'd run around her. And then one day I was running for my grandmama and it seemed like her fists grew long and traveled faster than the horse up the inner side of a gunshot. And when I saw what was coming from my face it was my grandma's big black fist knocked me to the blackest of nights. But when I woke up I would often overhear her telling me a story. And one story she'd tell me is a famous story and it's all about an eagle who thought he was a chicken too. The eagle's egg was placed into the nest of chickens. And one day the eagle had hatched and he looked around and he saw he was surrounded by all these little chickens. So the eagle, he began to act like a chicken. The eagle began to walk like a chicken. The eagle began to talk like a chicken. The eagle pecked his neck in the ground like a chicken and flew only a few feet off the ground like a chicken. But one day the eagle grew up and he looked into the sky and he saw a speck and the speck became a ball and the ball became a bird and the bird became a huge beast flying in the sky soaring in the winds. And the eagle who thought he was a chicken said to his neighbor who was a chicken, wow, what kind of bird is that? I want to be just like him. His friend said, oh, why that's an eagle. The king of all the birds, but don't you give it a second thought? You will never be like him. So the eagle never ever gave it a second thought and he died one day still thinking he was a chicken. What a tragedy built to soar in the heavens but he spent the rest of his life flying only a few feet off the ground. Little Freddy never settled for less than the best and always be the best you can be. I was a strong influence on that boy. Well, unfortunately, the time came for Little Freddy to be taken away from me. You see, the slave master had need of some more slaves on another plantation and they wanted to take Little Freddy from me. He had brothers and sisters over there he didn't even know. I had to keep the sad fact from him because if I had told him there would have been no keeping him. So I got him up early one Sunday morning and I put him on my back and I told him we'd go for a walk in the woods and after walking about 20 miles he'd hold on to my hand so tight the child was afraid of everything. He'd often think logs to be wild beasts and trees to be monsters but I would hold on to his hand tight and I'd sing to him to calm him down. I want Jesus to walk with me. I want Jesus to walk. And I let him off my shoulder. I told him to go on and play with your little brothers and sisters. It's okay. And like all little boys he ran on and played and it was the last smile I saw on Little Freddy's face while he was playing and having a good time. I quietly made my way back out into the woods so he could see me but it wasn't long before I could hear him crying after me. Grandmama! Grandmama! I want my grandmama! Where's my grandmama? I wanted so bad to go back after him but it would have endangered his life and mine so I just kept singing to myself, ignoring the screams. I want Jesus to walk with me. I want Jesus to walk with me. I never ever saw my grandmother again. Shall we look at this day and its popular characteristics from the slaves' point of view? What to the American slave is the Fourth of July? I answer. It is a day that reveals to him more than any other day of the year the gross conduct and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham. You know what is a swine, drover? I'll show you a man, drover. They inhabit all of our southern states. They perambulate the country and crowd the highways of the nation with droves of human stock. Armed with piston, quit and bowie knife, driving a company of a hundred men, women and children, these wretched souls 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 savage wretch who drives them see the old man with lots finned and grained. See the young mother, her shoulders bare to the scorching sun. Her briny tears falls on the brow of the babe in her arms. See too, the young girl of 13 weeping as she thinks of her mother from whom she's been torn. The crowd moves tardedly, heat and sorrow nearly consumes their strength. Suddenly there's a quick snap like the discharge of a rifle. The fetters clank, the chains rattle simultaneously. Suddenly your ears are saluted with a scream that seems to have torn its way into the center of your soul. The crack you heard was the sound of the slave whip. The scream you heard was the mother with the babe in her arms. Her strength that faltered under the weight of the chain in the child and the gash in her shoulder tells her to move on. Follow the drove to New Orleans. Attend an auction there. See men examine like horses. Horses see the frames of women brutally and brutally exposed by the shocking gaze of American slave buyers. Tell me, citizens, where under the sun can you witness a spectacle more fiendish and shocking? Yet this is but a glimpse of the American slave trade as it exists and the ruling part of the United States. But I fancy someone in my audience say, it is just in this circumstance when you and your brother abolitionists fail to make a favorable impression upon the public mind. If you would argue more and denounce less, if you would persuade more and rebuke less, your cause might be much more likely to succeed. But I submit, where all is plain, there's nothing to be argued. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? Am I to argue the point that the slave is a man? The point is conceded already. Slave holders acknowledge it in the enactment of the laws of their government. There are 72 crimes in the state of Virginia which, if committed by a black man, they subject him to the punishment of death while only two of those same crimes, if committed by a white man, will subject him to like punishment. What is this but the acknowledgement that the slave is a moral, intellectual, and responsible being? Southern statute books are filled with enactments under severe fine and penalty teaching of slaves to read and to write. When you can point to any such laws as it relates to the beasts of the field, then I will contend to argue the manhood of the slave, American. Your Republican politics, as well as your Republican religion, are frequently inconsistent. You boast of your love of liberty, your superior civilization, your pure Christianity, while the whole political power of the nation is solemnly pledged to perpetuate the enslavement of three millions of your countrymen. You embrace fugitives from abroad. You honor them with banquets. You toast them. You salute them. You protect them. But of your own fugitives at home, you advertise, hunt, shoot, arrest, and kill. You mourn fallen hungry and make the story or her songs the themes of your poets, your philosophers, and your statesmen. But of the 10,000 wrongs committed against the American slave, you enforce the strictest silence and would deem him an enemy of the nation that would make the subject public discourse. You profess to believe of one blood God made all men to dwell on all the face of the earth and that all men everywhere ought to love one another, yet you notoriously hate all those whose skin are not colored like your own. You declare to the world and to the world declare these truths we hold to be self-evident that all men are created equal and have been endowed by their creator with inalienable whites and that of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, yet you hold securely in bondage in the words of your own Thomas Jefferson that's more than ages of that which your fathers rose in rebellion to oppose a seventh part of the inhabitants of your country. Friends, the existence of slavery in this country brands your republicanism a sham, your humanity a base pretense, your Christianity a lie. It destroys your moral power abroad. It corrupts your politicians at home. It saps the very foundation of religion. It makes your name a hiss and a byword to a mocking earth. Thank you very much, you all have been a great audience. Thank you, thank you. Thank you so much, that was fabulous. So we do have question and answer session time. There are mics, if anybody has any questions, please feel free to walk over to the mic. Any questions? Yes, from the audience that's great too, that works well, if you shout it out for us. Will you all excuse me and let me put on my modern glasses? Okay, yes, the young person right here. Oh, beautiful, very, very bright, intelligent young person there. I appreciate that. This young person asked, how did I escape and what methods and what about some of the other methods that can be used to escape? Well, what I did the first years of my life free, when I wrote, I didn't reveal how I escaped because I didn't want slave catchers to find out about it and catch other slaves, because when I escaped, slavery was still legal. But what ended up happening was my wife Anna made a suit for me, Sailor Suit, and I was able to get on a transportation to go north and one day I just left the plantation, packed with everything that I needed and I just walked away and I got on the transportation and went up north and for a period of time I had to stay under the gun because of slave catchers. So for me, it was a matter of disguise was how I escaped. But others use other methods. Some people hid in luggage to escape. Some people went on the underground railroad. They often used the stars to guide them. They also put together maps on the quilts to guide them. They also used songs and code to guide them. There were many, many things that they did in order to send messages to one another to help themselves become free. So when you're enslaved, any method is a good method. Yes. Thank you very much, Mr. Douglas. One of the most famous things about you is that you taught yourself to read. I'd like to ask how you did it. Oh, beautiful. Thank you, thank you. Well, one day I saw the slave owner's wife, Ms. Sophia, reading the Bible and it sparked in me a desire to read which was against the law. I simply asked her to teach me to read and do you know she taught me without hesitation? Over time, kind little Freddie could read, I could write, I could spell words but when her husband found out about it he was very angry with me which you think would have discouraged me but in fact encouraged me on the power of the written and spoken word. He was going to say, oh, it's unruly. Cause much harm and mischief. If you give a slave an inch, he's liable to take a foot. You teach that slave how to read, he's gonna want to learn how to write. You teach him how to read the Bible, he'll be running away with himself. It was the first anti-slavery lecture I had ever heard. I now knew that reading and writing was my direct pathway from slavery to freedom and so there were a lot of young white kids in the street and I would often play with them and I would challenge them and I would say things like, I bet you can't spell that word and they say I bet you I can and I say I bet you you can't and then they would spell the word and I would learn that way. I also had to my disposal a sweet bread that I would offer the little children and for a little bit of sweet bread they would offer me that most valuable bread of knowledge. In this way I learned to read. I learned the word abolitionists. We thought two things. He thought one, America hadn't lived up to that promise of the Constitution. Two, he saw it as potential for America to be what it's supposed to be and he felt that he needed to put the idea of freedom back into the face of America and of Americans so that they can see for themselves where they're missing the mark. He went on to say 76 years ago, the people of this country were British subjects. They deemed England as the home government and England as the fatherland. The home government didn't impose on its colonial children such burdens and restraints as it deemed wise, right and proper, but the founding fathers who had not adopted the fashionable idea of that day of the infallibility of government begin to differ with those burdens and their restraints. They went so far in their excitement as to pronounce the home government unruly, unjust and oppressive and such as all together not to be quietly submitted to. And I scarcely need say fellow citizens that my opinions of those measures fully accords with that of your father. So Frederick Douglass saw the reasoning behind why the founding fathers did what they did and he felt because of that conviction it needed to bleed through and through to everyone. Does that make sense? So he saw it in two different ways. Yes, yes. Yeah, yeah, I believe that they weren't expecting what he was going to say, but you know what? From what I understand Frederick Douglass didn't know what he was gonna say in the beginning when he says friends, fellow citizens, he who could address this audience, they were his friends. Without a quailing sensation, has stronger nerves than I have. You know, and he goes on to speak and he tries very hard to move into the idea of the anniversary of national independence and political freedom, but after a while he just couldn't help but say, why am I, why did you call me here? As a matter of fact, he didn't do it on the fourth. He purposely did it on the fifth. So I think I was performing at the National Historic Site earlier today and one of the questions was how aware were people of the tragedy of slavery back during that time and the truth is is that most were not aware. They weren't aware of the horrors. As a matter of fact, the information, the propaganda or the media at that time was putting out a completely different story of what was happening and I think that what they understood, they misunderstood in other words and I think today a lot of what we think we understand we misunderstand because of our version of propaganda and media. That camera there, which I appreciate because I'm an actor, it's only capturing this. It does not see any of you all, which means that whoever is looking through that lens can be told anything about this without seeing everything else that's happening around us. It's called edited information and unfortunately people have been jailed, killed, lynched, wars have been fought based on this. It's interesting the word television. Once again, I'm an actor, I love being on TV. When you break the word up, tell, lie, vision. Yes, it did. There was friction between Frederick Douglass and President Lincoln and Frederick Douglass was known to say he moved from Rochester to Washington, D.C. so that he could watch Lincoln and he got so frustrated that one day he walked up to the White House door and knocked. Of course he was sent to the service entrance but he sat in a dark corner and a confused politician came up to him and said, sir, are you the president? He said, no, I'm Frederick Douglass and when President Lincoln heard that Frederick Douglass was in the building he called him up to the office. Now you have to understand, if this is President Lincoln's office there was politicians lined up all throughout the White House up the stairs waiting to see President Lincoln but President Lincoln invited Frederick Douglass past all the politicians into his office and they had a discussion and that discussion was, from what I hear, a debate. President Lincoln did not want to emancipate the slaves. He felt it was too soon, too early, and too dangerous. Matter of fact, what he'd rather Frederick Douglass be is a leader in another country and he wanted Frederick Douglass to start over similar to how the founding fathers started over after leaving Europe they came here to start over but Frederick Douglass refused and he encouraged President Lincoln and they had a great deal of respect for one another so much that after President Lincoln was voted into office again after his speech he looked over at Frederick Douglass and he said, so how did I do? Yes. Henry Thoreau was one that was major to him. You'll find him in books of other people's lives. He had a best friend who was of mixed race who was a Rosa Crucian which is similar to the Masonic Order so he had a connection with him and he had a lot of influence there. Even though there was friction between him and President Lincoln he still admired the ideas of President Lincoln. He actually studied the ideas nevertheless of the founding fathers and he also studied other freedom fighters which would be Henry Highland Garnett, Shields Green. He was also influenced by John Brown even though he felt that John Brown and the raid on Harper's Ferry was a suicide mission. So there was a lot of influence there. He even went to Egypt and was influenced by what he learned there in the Great Pyramids. So there was a lot of heavy influence on Frederick Douglass. Yes. In the women's movement? Oh yes, I'm so glad that you said that. Yeah, Frederick Douglass after the Emancipation, even before the Emancipation but he devoted full time to the fighting for women's rights so much to the point that Frederick Douglass was called a feminist and he was very passionate about the women's liberation movement just as passionate he was about the freedom of the slaves and he was so passionate about it that even up to the day that he died as a matter of fact, the day that he died he had just come back from a convention where he spoke at a women's convention and he came up his stairs and he was standing in front of the door and he fell down and died. So up to the day that he died, literally, he was fighting for women's rights. I think we have time for one more question. We have one more question. How about, can I do these three? Okay, okay, all right. Right here, yeah. How about right here real quick? Yes, he did, absolutely, yeah. He was very saddened by what had happened. Where he was killed, Frederick Douglass often would go to that same theater and he would quote a fellow. Oh, yeah. No, actually he was born with Frederick Bailey, Frederick Bailey. As a matter of fact, I'm connected to the family, the descendants of Frederick Douglass and one of which is his great, great, great, great grand-nephew whose name is Terence Bailey that lives in Easton where Frederick Douglass grew up as his slave. But he changed it from the Lady of the Lake. The hero in that story is named Douglass so he changed his name to Douglass. Yes, the young person, did you have a question? Wait, one more question? I thought I wanted to hear from a young person. Oh, okay, well so did the politician. He thought I was a president too, it's okay, it's okay. All right, all right. Well, thank you all, you've had a wonderful, wonderful audience and thank you so much. Mr. Douglass will join us in the Boeing Learning Center, which is two floors up and you can have your picture taken with him. So we invite you to go up there, we've got lots of other activities there. So thank you again so much, I've loved having you again. Thank you, I appreciate it. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Is he okay with that? Yes, I'm not sure, you'll be the only one.