What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?

What to the slave is the fourth of July?

I asked myself this question, and I felt a pang of guilt.

Sure, some of that guilt was rooted in our collective history.

But in my case, there was something more.

I lived, after all, where these words had once been uttered. On July 5, 1852, while standing in Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York, Frederick Douglass had delivered a speech under this title.

Having spent 15 years (and counting) in Rochester, I was obviously familiar with Douglass’ story, that which started by escaping slavery in Maryland. He ultimately landed in Rochester, where he published the abolitionist newspaper The North Star and immersed himself in related activities.

I had crossed a bridge that carries his name (along with that of Susan B. Anthony) innumerable times. I had seen statues of him around town, often pausing as a matter of reverence. And yes, I had even visited his gravesite in Mount Hope Cemetery.

But in between scrolling on Instagram and pretending to be more important than I was, I had never taken the time to engage with his words.

So on July 3, 2025, I pulled up the transcript of “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?”, poured some Wegmans-brand coffee, and started reading.

Among a sea of brilliance, a few excerpts stood out.

Fellow Citizens, I am not wanting in respect for the fathers of this republic.

They were statesmen, patriots and heroes, and for the good they did, and the principles they contended for, I will unite with you to honor their memory.

But…I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary!

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 denunciations 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 these United States, at this very hour.

Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the every day practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.

Allow me to say…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 work The downfall of slavery. 

I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope.

I poured another cup of coffee, and I penned this response.

Dear Mr. Douglass,

Mercifully, times have changed.

As you well know, slavery—at least the type of which you spoke—has been abolished.

Humanity has experienced great leaps in scientific knowledge and technological prowess.

What has not changed, however, is the immutable fact that no matter our knowledge of atoms and our growing ability to manipulate them, we are very much subject to the forces that come with their peculiar arrangement that is human.

Ego. Power. Love. Hatred.

None of this, Mr. Douglass, can be altered in a permanent way.

In that sense, we are all slaves—slaves to the human condition.

With that said, in the way you so honorably did, as long as my atoms remain in this arrangement, and before they are put to more noble use, I will hope.

Sincerely,

A Rochesterian