workingclasshistory:

On this day, 5 July 1852, abolitionist and women’s rights advocate Frederick Douglass delivered his famous speech “The meaning of July 4th for the Negro” in Rochester, New York: “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. This 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 you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony.” More info in this people’s history of the fourth of July: https://libcom.org/history/peoples-history-fourth-july https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1160778970773918/?type=3