--- title: Behind the Speech: What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? description: Pulitzer-winning Frederick Douglass biographer David Blight explains what to know about the famous speech, and why its message still endures canonical: https://time.com/5614930/frederick-douglass-fourth-of-july/ author: Olivia B. Waxman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2019-07-03T15:00:12.000Z article:modified_time: 2024-01-24T11:18:56.000Z article:section: History og:title: Behind the Speech: What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? og:description: "What the speech is saying is you must destroy first what you created and remake it, or it will be destroyed — and you with it" og:url: https://time.com/5614930/frederick-douglass-fourth-of-july/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltca36f50c73a120d8/6989ff458fd2ee26d435fb71/frederick-douglass-fourth-of-july-slave.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2405 og:image:height: 1353 og:image:alt: frederick-douglass-fourth-of-july-slave og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Behind the Speech: What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? twitter:description: "What the speech is saying is you must destroy first what you created and remake it, or it will be destroyed — and you with it" twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltca36f50c73a120d8/6989ff458fd2ee26d435fb71/frederick-douglass-fourth-of-july-slave.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # 'What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?': The History of Frederick Douglass' Searing Independence Day Oration > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: 'America Has Been Divided Since the Beginning.' One Author on Why Educating Kids About Race in the U.S. Is More Important Than Ever [Watch (HLS stream): 'America Has Been Divided Since the Beginning.' One Author on Why Educating Kids About Race in the U.S. Is More Important Than Ever](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/HWKYLirD.m3u8) (4:13)  _Published 2019-02-28. TIME spoke with Khalil Gibran Muhammad, author of The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America and a Professor of History, Race and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School_  by [Olivia B. Waxman](https://time.com/author/olivia-b-waxman/)  ## Olivia B. Waxman Staff Writer Updated: Jan 24, 2024 11:18 AM UTCPublished: Jul 3, 2019 3:00 PM UTC  American abolitionist Frederick Douglass, circa 1855. American abolitionist Frederick Douglass, circa 1855. Library of Congress—Getty Images  by [Olivia B. Waxman](https://time.com/author/olivia-b-waxman/)  ## Olivia B. Waxman Staff Writer Updated: Jan 24, 2024 11:18 AM UTCPublished: Jul 3, 2019 3:00 PM UTC America has been working to fully live up to the ideals laid out in the Declaration of Independence ever since the document was [printed](https://time.com/4838700/americas-real-independence-day/) on July 4, 1776\. So while the U.S. tends to go all out celebrating freedom on the Fourth of July, [alternate](https://twitter.com/kojoshow/status/1273272941787197440) independence commemorations held a day later often draw attention to a different side of that story, with readings of the Frederick Douglass speech best known today as “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” The speech was originally delivered at a moment when the country was fiercely locked in debate over the question of slavery, but there’s a reason why it has remained famous more than 150 years after emancipation, says David Blight, author of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize winning biography _Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom._ To some, celebrations of American independence on July 4 are a reminder of the country’s [hypocrisy](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/fourth-of-july-independence-day-is-a-celebration-of%5Fb%5F595bcfffe4b0f078efd98cba) on the matter of freedom, as slavery played a key role in the nation’s history; even today, America’s history of racism is [still being written](https://time.com/5615610/colson-whitehead-the-nickel-boys-interview/), while other forms of modern-day slavery persist in the U.S. and [around the world](https://qz.com/africa/1333946/global-slavery-index-africa-has-the-highest-rate-of-modern-day-slavery-in-the-world/). For those who feel that way, July 5 may be an easier day to celebrate: on that day in 1827,[ 4,000 African Americans paraded down Broadway in New York City](https://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/03/opinion/nyregionopinions/happy-fifth-of-july-new-york.html) to celebrate the [end of slavery](https://www.nyhistory.org/community/slavery-end-new-york-state) in their state. --- ### More from TIME --- One person who felt that way was Douglass, the famous abolitionist, who was himself born into slavery. When the Ladies Anti-Slavery Society of Rochester, N.Y., invited Douglass to give a July 4 speech in 1852, Douglass opted to speak on July 5 instead. Addressing an audience of about 600 at the newly constructed Corinthian Hall, he [started out](https://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/what-to-the-slave-is-the-fourth-of-july/) by acknowledging that the signers of the Declaration of Independence were “brave” and “great” men, and that the way they wanted the Republic to look was in the right spirit. But, he said, speaking more than a decade before slavery was ended nationally, a lot of work still needed to be done so that all citizens can enjoy “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Above “your national, tumultuous joy” — the July 4th celebrations of white Americans — were the “mournful wails of millions” whose heavy chains “are, today, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them.” In the oration’s most famous passages, Douglass discussed what it felt like to see such festivities and to know independence was not a given for people like him: --- > “” --- Douglass’ speech also foreshadowed the bloody reckoning to come: Civil War. “For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder,” he said. “We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.” [_Get your history fix in one place: sign up for the weekly TIME History newsletter_](http://time.com/newsletter-history) At the time Douglass spoke, Blight says, the opportunity was ripe for a lecture on the moral crisis. “_Uncle Tom’s Cabin_ had just been published that spring and was taking the country by storm. The country was in the midst of crises over fugitive slave rescues in the wake of the [Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.](https://time.com/4039140/fugitive-slace-act-165/) The political party system was beginning to tear itself asunder over the expansion of slavery,” he says. “It’s also an election year; the 1852 presidential election was heating up that summer. The [Nativist party](https://time.com/4280458/republican-party-know-nothings/) is rising. It’s an extraordinary political moment.” It was a turbulent time for Douglass personally, too. In the late 1840s and into the 1850s, his finances were tight, and he was struggling to sustain the newspaper he founded, _The North Star_. He’d had a breakdown in the early 1850s, and was having trouble supporting his family. His friend Julia Griffith, the treasurer of the Rochester group that invited him to give the 1852 speech, was one of the people helping him fund-raise to keep the paper alive. The message wasn’t new — Douglass promoted those ideas year-round — but Blight says he knew the Fourth of July was a good hook, and expected the speech to be a hit. He had it printed immediately after delivering it and then went out on the road and sold it for 50 cents a copy or $6 for a hundred. “He does some of his greatest writing in early 1850s during this terrible personal crisis,” Blight says, “and right there in the middle of it comes the greatest speech he’s ever delivered, of the hundreds of speeches he delivered in his life.” “It’s the birth of American Independence, the birth of a nation, and what the speech is saying is you must destroy first what you created and remake it, or it will be destroyed — and you with it,” says Blight. Douglass continued to add to the speech in the years that followed. On July 4, 1862 — with the war underway — he addressed an audience of about 2,000 in Himrods Corner, N.Y.; Blight argues that his shift then from addressing simply “you” to discussing the Revolution as something undertaken by “your fathers, and my fathers” indicates he believed emancipation will happen more than he did a decade earlier. President Lincoln did issue the Emancipation Proclamation six months later — but even after the war’s end, Douglass continued to use the Fifth of July to draw attention to the nation’s track record on the idea celebrated on the Fourth. On July 5, 1875, as [Reconstruction](https://time.com/5562869/reconstruction-history/) brought its own fears, like violence from the Ku Klux Klan, Douglass shifted his [speech](https://www.loc.gov/resource/mfd.23001/?sp=1) for the day, asking, “If war among the whites brought peace and liberty to the blacks, what will peace among the whites bring?” But the 1852 “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” speech remains the best known of his addresses on the occasion, especially as it became even [more widely read](https://billmoyers.com/content/presenting-mr-frederick-douglass/) in the late-20th century, with events like the public readings sponsored by the [Vermont Humanities Council](https://www.vermonthumanities.org/programs/public-programs/reading-frederick-douglass/douglass-faqs/) and a powerful reading by [James Earl Jones](https://www.democracynow.org/2017/7/4/what%5Fto%5Fthe%5Fslave%5Fis%5F4th) in 2004. Douglass’ message — about America struggling to live up to the lofty goals it set for itself at the founding — continues to be relevant, says Blight. “He would use the Fourth of July for its irony over and over and over, just like the Declaration of Independence is used to remind the country of its potential and promise, and to him, race was always the measure of that,” he says. “America, by its nature, is never quite fulfilling all of those promises.” ## Transcript Freedom. Freedom. Black History Month is important, not only because in its earliest days it was an acknowledgement of the contributions of black people to American democracy. But even over the last 40 years, when it went form a week to a month, it has become increasingly important To explaining how the nation became a nation that is multiracial. None of what we call civil rights today makes sense without understanding black history. [ MUSIC ] Civil rights means that you are fighting for, or acknowledging, the basic guarantees that every individual protected by the Constitution Constitution is entitled to. Since President Trump was elected in 2016, the broadest definitions of civil rights have been challenged. We've seen instances of swastikas being sprayed on the sides of buildings in liberal cities around. America or nooses hanging on coworkers' desks. While it's hard to draw a direct line from the president to all of this behavior, we certainly can draw a dotted line. And in that sense he has not used the power of his office or the power of the pulpit to define an America that is free of racial hatred, but in fact, has excused much racial Racial hatred as a kind of they get to behave this way too. One of things I think is important about both looking at this as a moment that says, we still have to work to do even for people who are self- defined liberals and democrats, is to be more honest about their own coming- of- age in a racist country. Be honest about the fact that. When a blackface image of you shows up on your yearbook page, whether it's you or not, which is unbelievable, but putting that aside, that your fellow students thought it was funny and interesting. The editors of the book thought it was okay to publish, and the school thought it was okay to publish. And until we can have that conversation about the consumption of racism, then we're not going to see the fast or hard break from the past from the past that keeps popping up. [ MUSIC ] Sometimes people express frustration that, no matter how much information you share with someone and how compelling your set of arguments, and what you point them to to read, they still don't change. They still don't believe white privilege is rea. And I would say that while you still have to press forward, you have to make the case, you may not win those arguments, The real opportunity for us starts with our kindergarteners. We can't make the assumption that five year olds are colorblind, because children see difference in the world. And if we leave them on their own to fill in the blanks, they're going to learn from society. They're going to pick up all the cultural cues that exist in our world. So we have to be intentional. But we also could be more deliberate about what What we teach them in class. If you ask children of elementary age, who are the most famous Americans who are not presidents, the two most commonly cited people are Dr. Martin Luther KIng, Jr. and Ms. Rosa Parks. What's interesting is that I would say if you could Pick two people to completely rewrite the story. They are the perfect candidates because their familiarity already overindexes for the kind of superficial history that we're teaching our children. The kind of Black History Month bulletin board of which they become prominent figures. Both of them are literally 180 degrees more complicated and quite different than we like to remember them. The hope for me, is that if we can take on that work together, if we can be serious about changing what we teach our kids, then we can expect different adults And if we get different adults then they'll understand to be more vigilant about not repeating the mistakes of the past. 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