In celebration of the July Fourth holiday, we asked a few of our authors to discuss what Independence Day means to them (a la Beacon Broadside’s awesome blog post for the holiday last year). Three of our authors responded with mixed emotions, musings of its unsung heroes, and stories of forgotten holidays. Read their pieces below.

Beverly C. Tomek is author of Colonization and Its Discontents: Emancipation, Emigration, and Antislavery in Antebellum Pennsylvania (NYU Press, 2011).

July 4th brings mixed feelings for those of us who focus on issues of social justice in our scholarship and activism. On the one hand, it is a day of celebration, but on the other, it is a stark reminder of the contrast between the ideal and the real. Given the amount of time I spend reading and writing about antislavery, any mention of Independence Day takes me back to the antebellum years – to a time when a small group of dedicated reformers pushed this nation to broaden the scope of liberty.

July 4th was an important and highly contested date for the antislavery movement. It began when the American Colonization Society (ACS) tried to claim the patriotic holiday. Starting in the 1820s, the ACS encouraged ministers of various denominations across the young nation to take up special Independence Day collections to be used to send blacks to Liberia, where they were to help spread Christianity and American liberty to the “Dark Continent.” Most African Americans argued that the ACS’s scheme stood for anything but liberty, but most whites who opposed slavery in the 1820s and beyond believed in the Society’s mission.

On July 4, 1829, however, a white abolitionist named William Lloyd Garrison sparked an antislavery revolution as he reclaimed the holiday for advocates of freedom. By that point, July 4th colonization collections had become widespread, and Garrison had been asked to deliver a speech in support of the movement. When he rose to speak, to the shock of his listeners, instead of celebrating American freedom and independence and supporting colonization, he chastised a nation that kept human beings in bondage. Slavery made a mockery of American ideals, and he set out to show his listeners that human bondage must end and it must not depend upon colonization.

Though Garrison’s speech sparked what would become known as the “immediate abolition” movement, the most famous July 4 speech of all came from black abolitionist Frederick Douglass. An escaped slave who had gained international celebrity status, Douglass was asked to speak at an Independence Day commemoration in Rochester, New York, in 1852. He electrified the audience when he asked “What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us?” The answer was no:

“I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought light and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. . . . I can to-day take up the plaintive lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people!”

Frederick Douglass’s address, “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro” (5 July 1852), is one of the most famous speeches in U.S. history. It highlighted the disparity between the white Americans who celebrated “freedom” and “independence” on that date and the black Americans who lived their lives in chains, forced to work for the benefit of others.

Throughout much of the early nineteenth century, African Americans chose to celebrate West Indies Emancipation Day on August 1 instead of Independence Day on July 4th. That began to change when the Civil War became a war for freedom after the Emancipation Proclamation. Even so, especially after the regression that accompanied the end of Reconstruction, July 4th maintained some its tarnish for many disenfranchised Americans.

With recent Supreme Court rulings, this year the 4th of July will seem a little more legitimate to some who continue to labor for social justice, though true liberty remains elusive for far too many in the U.S. even today. Perhaps someday all Americans will be able to share equally in the festivities and enjoy the day without reservation, but the fight is far from over.