Responding to Douglass.

Summary: To summarize Douglass’s speech he goes on to call forth and bring attention to how the 4th of July is nothing but a white man’s holiday and not for the African-Americans to celebrate, for them it’s a mournful holiday. For instance, the fourth of July may symbolize American independence but not for Douglass and many other African-Americans as he explains it as the holiday is a mockery to African-Americans and how you couldn’t truly see this holiday as a great thing because they were not free they were enslaved and oppressed. Not only that but many African Americans at the time had everything taken from them stripped of their independence, liberty, and justice.

Quote: “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. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, “may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave  to the roof of my mouth!” To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world. My subject, then, fellow-citizens, is AMERICAN SLAVERY.”

Paraphrase: For the American citizens this holiday may be something worth celebrating but to me, it’s nothing but grievance and hearing the cries of millions of african Americans who were enslaved. We must not forget what these people have done and never allow them to get past this wrongdoing because fellow citizens of America this is nonetheless AMERICAN SLAVERY.

Explanation: This quote helps Douglass to illustrate his problem because it goes on to show how the fourth of July may be a happy and a day where American citizens can show off their Nationalism but to him and many other African Americans this day brings nothing but sorrow and grief as they were truly not able to receive their freedom and independence as the holiday shows mockery to them as they were truly aliens to this holiday and they really couldn’t be apart of it. He also shows in the quote above that he hears the “mournful wail of millions! whose chains, heavy and grievous.” Showing how he has mourned the millions of African Americans that had died for this country and were enslaved and oppressed for this so-called “Independence”.