Douglass Asks: What Is the Fourth to a Slave?
Frederick Douglass stood before the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society on July 5th, 1852, and asked the question that made white abolitionists squirm: what's independence day to three million people still in chains? He'd been invited to celebrate. Instead, he called American freedom "a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages." The speech ran two hours. Newspapers printed it in full across the North. And the formerly enslaved man forced his progressive allies to admit they were toasting liberty while funding its opposite with every cotton shirt they wore.
July 5, 1852
174 years ago
Key Figures & Places
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