what to the slave is the fourth of july?

"...what, am i to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant of their relations to their fellow men, to beat them with sticks, to flay their flesh with the lash, to load their limbs with irons, to hunt them with dogs, to sell them at auction[s], to sunder their families, to knock out their teeth, to burn their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters? must i argue that a system thus marked with blood, and stained with pollution, is wrong? no! i will not. i have better employment for my time and strength than such arguments would imply....

what, to the american slave, is your fourth 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 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...."

*excerpts from a 1841 speech from frederick douglass, full speech @ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h2927t.html