 I'm Marcia Joyner and we are navigating the journey. So what to the American slave is the Fourth of July? I answer a day that reveals to him more than all other days of the year. The gross injustice and cruelty to which he is a constant victim. That was the speech given by Frederick Douglass in Rochester, New York, July 5, 1852. And if you were with us last week, you will know that our local vocalist, the one and only famous Rea Fox, read the most of the speech because it is so long we had to break it up into two parts. So Rea will continue with this speech. Rea, thank you so much. You've done a wonderful job. Thank you, Marcia. Thank you so much. It's wonderful to be representing this piece of all of our history in this country. Yeah, before you start, let me just say this. For anybody that lives or visits DC, you can see the Frederick Douglass house. And I'm almost afraid to give the address. Forget that. The way people are dismantling and damaging things, let's let that one go. Forget I said it. Sad, sad, sad. Yes, so shall I begin? Yes, please. Thank you. So picking up somewhere in the neighborhood of where I left off, Frederick Douglass says, fellow citizens, pardon me. Allow me to ask why am I called upon to speak here today? What have I or those 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? And am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us? Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions? Then would my task be light and my burden easy and delightful? For who is there so cold that a nation's sympathy could not warm him? Who so obdurate and dead to the claims of gratitude that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? Who so stolid and selfish that would not give his voice to swell the alleluia of a nation's jubilee when the chains of servitude have been torn from his limbs? I am not that man. In that case, in a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak and the lame man leap as a heart. But such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary. Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings which you this day rejoice are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you has brought stripes and death to me. The Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty and call upon him to join in your joyous anthems were in human mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean citizens to mock me by asking me to speak today? If so, there is a parallel in your conduct and let me warn you that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation whose crimes lowering up to heaven were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying the nation in irrecoverable ruin. I can today take up the plaintive lament of the peeled and woe smitten people. Fellow citizens above your national tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions whose chains heavy and grievous yesterday are today rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reached them. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember these bleeding children of sorrow this day, may my right hand forget her cunning and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth. To forget them to pass lightly over their wrongs and to chime in with the popular theme would be treason most scandalous and shocking and would make me a reproach before God and the world. My subject then, fellow citizens, is American slavery. I shall see this day and its popular characteristics from the slave's point of view, standing there identified with the American bondsman, making his wrongs mine. I do not hesitate to declare with all my soul that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July. Whether we turn to the declarations of the past or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America's false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity, which is outraged in the name of liberty, which is fettered in the name of the Constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery, the great sin of shame of America. I will not equivocate, I will not excuse. I will use the severest language I can command, and yet not one word shall escape me than any man whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice or who is not at heart a slave holder shall not confess to be right and just. For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. It is not astonishing that while we were plowing and planting and reaping and using all kinds of mechanical tools and erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in the metals of brass, iron, copper, silver and gold, that while we were reading, writing and ciphering, acting as clerks, merchants and secretaries, having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators and teachers, that while we are engaged in all manner of enterprise common to other men, digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hillside, living, moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives and children above all confessing and worshiping the Christian's God and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave, we are called upon to prove that we are men. Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty, that he is the rightful owner of his own body? You have already declared it, must I argue the wrongness of slavery? Is that a question for Republicans? Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation as a matter beset with great difficulty involving a doubtful application of the principles of justice, hard to understand? How should I look today in the presence of Americans dividing and subdividing a discourse to show that men have a natural right to freedom? Speaking of it relatively and positively, negatively and affirmatively, to do so would make myself ridiculous and offer an insult to your understanding that there is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven that does not know that slavery is wrong for him. At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument is needed. Scorching irony, not convincing argument is what is needed. Oh, if I had the ability and could I reach the nation's ear, I would today pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm and stern rebuke. For it is not a light that is needed, but fire. It is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened. The conscience of the nation must be roused. The propriety of the nation must be startled. The hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed. And its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced. Go where you may, search where you will, roam upon all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse. And when you find the last layer facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say it with me that for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without rival. You boast of your love of liberty, your superior civilization, your pure Christianity, while the whole political power of the nation is embodied in two great political parties, solemnly pledged to support and perpetuate the enslavement of three million of your countrymen. You hurl your anethemas at the crowned heads, tyrants of Russia, Austria, you pride yourself on your democratic institutions, while you yourself consent to be the mere tools and bodyguards of the tyrants of Virginia and Carolina. You witness, you invite to your shores fugitives of oppression from abroad, honor them with banquets, greet them with ovation, cheer them, toast them, salute them, protect them and pour out your money to them like water. But the fugitives from your own land, you advertise, you hunt, you arrest, you shoot and you kill. You glory in your refinement and your universal education, yet you maintain a system as barbarous and dreadful as ever staying the character of a nation. A system begun in avarice, supported in pride, perpetuated in cruelty. You shed tears over fallen Hungary and make the sad story of her wrongs the theme of your poet statesmen and orators, till your gallant sons are ready to fly to arms to vindicate her cause against her oppressors. But in regard to the 10,000 wrongs of the American slave, you would enforce the strict desilence and would hail him as an enemy of the nation who dares to make those wrongs the subject of public discourse. You are all on fire at the mention of liberty for France or for Ireland, but are as cold as an iceberg at the thought of liberty for the enslaved of America. You discourse eloquently on the dignity of labor, yet you sustain a system which in its very essence casts a stigma upon labor. You bear your bosoms to the storm of British artillery to throw off a three-penny tax on D, and yet ring the last hard-earned farthing from the grasp of the black laborers of your country. You profess to believe that of one blood, God made all nations of men to dwell upon the face of the earth and have commanded all men everywhere to love one another, yet you notoriously hate and glory in your hatred all men whose skins are not colored like your own. You declare before the world and are understood by the world to declare that you hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, and that among these rights, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and yet you hold securely in bondage, which according to your own Thomas Jefferson is the worst that ages of that which your father's rose and rebellion to oppose. A seventh part of the inhabitants of your own country, fellow citizens, I will not enlarge further on your national inconsistencies. The existence of slavery in this country brands your reputation, your republicanism as a sham. Your humanity as a base pretends, your Christianity as a lie. It destroys your moral power abroad. It corrupts your politicians at home. It saps the foundation of religion. It makes your name a hissing and a byword to mocking earth. Is the antagonistic force in your government the only thing that seriously disturbs and endangers your union? It fetters your progress. It is the enemy of improvement. It is a deadly foe of education. It fosters pride. It breeds insolence. It promotes vice. It shelters crime. It is a curse to the earth that supports it, and yet you cling to it as if there were the sweet anchor there of all your hopes. Oh, be warned. Be warned. A horrible reptile is coiled upon your nation's bosom. The venomous creature is nursing at the tender breast of your youthful republic. For the love of God tear away and fling from you, the hideous monster, and let the weight of 20 millions crush and destroy it forever. But it is answered and replied to this that precisely what I have denounced is in fact guaranteed and sanctioned by the Constitution of the United States, that the right to hold on to and to hunt slaves is part of the Constitution that framed by the illustrious fathers of the republic. Then I dare to affirm notwithstanding all I have said before your fathers, you stopped, you stooped, basically stooped, to pattern with us in a double sense, to keep the word of promises to the ear, to break it to the heart. And instead of being the honest men I have before declared them to be, they were the various imposters that ever practiced on mankind. This is the inevitable conclusion, and from it there is no escape. But I differ from those who charge this baseness on the framers of the Constitution of the United States. It is a slander upon their memory, at least so I believe. There is not time now to argue the Constitution of question at length, nor I have the ability, nor have I the ability to discuss it as if it ought to be discussed. Fellow citizens, there is no matter in respect to which the people have allowed themselves to be so ruinously imposed upon as that of the pro-slavery character of the Constitution. In that instrument I hold there is neither warrant, license, nor sanction of the hateful thing. But interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a glorious liberty document. Read as preamble, consider its purposes, is slavery among them? Is it at the gateway? Or is it in the temple? It is neither. Well I do not intend to argue this question on the present occasion. Let me ask, if it be not somewhat singular that if the Constitution were intended to be by its framers and adapters a slave-holding instrument, why neither slavery, slave-holding nor slave can anywhere be found in it? What would be thought of an instrument drawn up, legally drawn up for the purpose of entitling the city of Rochester to a track of land in which no mention of the land was made? Now there are certain rules of interpretation for proper understanding of all legal instruments. These rules are well-established, they are plain, common-sense rules such as you and I and all of us understand and apply without having passed years in the study of law. I scout the ideas at the question of the constitutionality or unconstitutionality of slavery is not a question for the people. I hold that every American citizen has a right to form an opinion of the Constitution and to propagate that opinion and to use all honorable means to make that opinion the prevailing one. Without this right the liberty of an American citizen would be insecure as that of a Frenchman. Ex-President Dallas tells us that the Constitution is an object to which no American mind can be too attentive and no American heart too devoted. He says further, the Constitution in its words is plain and intelligible, is meant for the homebred unsophisticated understandings of all our fellow citizens. Senator Berrien tells us that the Constitution is the fundamental law that which controls all others. The charter of our liberties which every citizen has a personal interest in understanding thoroughly. The testimony of Senator Breeze, Lewis Cass and many others that might be named who are everywhere esteemed as sound lawyers so regard the Constitution. I take it therefore that it is not presumption in a private citizen's to form an opinion of that instrument. Now take the Constitution according to its plain reading and I defy the presentation of a single pro-slavery cause in it. On the other hand I will be found, it will be found to contain principles and purposes entirely hostile to the existence of slavery. I have detained my audience entirely too long already. At some future period I will gladly avail myself to an opportunity to give this subject a full and fair discussion. Allow me to say in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country. There are forces in operation which must inevitably worked for the downfall of slavery. The arm of the Lord is not shortened and the doom of slavery is certain. I therefore leave off where I began with hope. While drawing encouragement from the Declaration of Independence, the great principles it contains and the genius of American institutions, my spirit is also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age. In the fervent aspiration of William Lloyd Garrison I say and let every heart join in saying God speed the year of Jubilee. The wide world o'er when from their galling chains set free, the oppress shall violently bend the knee and wear the yoke of tyranny. Like brutes no more that year will come and freedom reign to man his plundered fights again restore. To man his plundered fights again restore God speed the day when human blood shall cease to flow in every climb be understood the claims of human brotherhood and each return for evil good. Not blow for blow that day will come all feuds will end and change into a faithful friend. Each foe God speed the hour the glorious hour when none on earth shall exercise a lordly power nor in a tyrant's presence coward. Let it all to mankind statue tower by equal birth that hour will come to each of us and from his prison house the thrall go forth until that day our arrive until that year and day and our arrive with head and heart and hand I'll strive to break the rod and rend the guide the spoiler of his prey deprive so witness heaven. That's a nice place to end. This speech goes on and it's it's exquisite it is it is exquisite. I I just cannot thank you enough for taking this project on and and for the audience. And I asked Raya if she knew someone that would do the speech I will and I have to tell you that I did think you know it's to honor Frederick Douglass it's a man's speech so forcefully given but this is the 21st century and I feel so honored and so right to be delivering the words of this speech because the shadow is still with us. People will ask the question well why why keep talking about slavery slavery's over the shadow is with us and these ideas so solid and strong in that regard must be brought forth now to see how far we've come and how far we have not come. And then slavery or is more than people being enslaved. Think of the people that are addicted to gambling that are addicted to cigarettes addicted to opium there's all kind of enslavements and it enslave not only the body but the soul and I think that's what he was saying more than anything that that we can and have and will let go of the being enslaved. We will unaddict ourselves yes yes and and it's my goodness and to think that he was a slave and wrote that beautiful oh I have books and books of all the stuff he has written my goodness and I think well I've got an education and I can't write like that. Yeah and that other you know something that we discussed a bit during the week we use these terms so freely slave and slave owner and slave master clearly this man was a genius and enlightened mind in so many ways so he was an enslaved person but he was definitely not a slave we think of a slave as something totally different and this is the loss of the country this is the loss of America to have enslaved so many of her people and not reap to the beautiful benefits of their gifts this is a great loss. It is it is and for us not to look at the road we have trod but how far we have come you know dragging the past with us and it's well again thank you so much I don't know what there is to say except well there's one last line of that the poetic ending that he was going when I shift the pages I'd actually like to end on that he said and never from my chosen post what era the peril or the cost I will not be driven. Aloha and we'll see you next time.