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FREDERICK DOUGLASS' 4TH OF JULY SPEECH FROM 1852

7/4/2018

 
Frederick Douglass escaped from slavery becoming one of America's most prominent social activists, speakers and authors.  Ten years before President Lincoln freed slaves in America, Douglas was asked to give a 4th of July speech in Rochester, New York.  Today, I'm thinking deeply about his words.  Here's what he said in 1852:

“Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day?” Frederick Douglass asked as he began his speech and continued:  "“Fellow-citizens above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! Whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them.
What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July?  I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy -- a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour."    

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    Victor M. Parachin ...is a

    Vedic educator, yoga instructor, Buddhist meditation teacher and author of a dozen books. Buy his books at amazon or your local bookstore. 

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