On July 5, 1852, Fred­er­ick Dou­glass gave his clas­sic speech at Rochester, New York on the mean­ing of the 4th of July to the Amer­i­can slave.

Fel­low-cit­i­zens, par­don me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? 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? And am I, there­fore, called upon to bring our hum­ble offer­ing to the nation­al altar, and to con­fess the ben­e­fits and express devout grat­i­tude for the bless­ings result­ing from your inde­pen­dence to 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 life and heal­ing to you has brought stripes and death to me.

This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fet­ters into the grand illu­mi­nat­ed tem­ple of lib­er­ty, and call upon him to join you in joy­ous anthems, were inhu­man mock­ery and sac­ri­le­gious irony. Do you mean, cit­i­zens, to mock me, by ask­ing me to speak today?

What, to the Amer­i­can slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all oth­er days of the year, the gross injus­tice and cru­el­ty to which he is a 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 that would dis­grace a nation of sav­ages. There is not a nation of the earth guilty of prac­tices more shock­ing and bloody than are the peo­ple of these Unit­ed States at this very hour.

At a time like this, scorch­ing irony, not con­vinc­ing argu­ment, is need­ed. O! had I the abil­i­ty, and could reach the nation’s ear, I would, to-day, pour forth a stream, a fiery stream of bit­ing ridicule, blast­ing reproach, with­er­ing sar­casm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is need­ed, but fire; it is not the gen­tle show­er, but thun­der. We need the storm, the whirl­wind, the earth­quake. The feel­ing of the nation must be quick­ened; the con­science of the nation must be roused; the pro­pri­ety of the nation must be star­tled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and the crimes against God and man must be pro­claimed and denounced.

Read the full speech here.