Micro-Activity #4: Responding to Douglass

Rania Mohamed 

The nature of Fredrick Douglass’ argument in “What To the Slave Is the Forth of July?” clearly demonstrates to us readers and to his audience that he has a masterful way of conveying his message and rallying a group around his point. He had a brilliant way of captivating his audience and opening them up to what he has to say, while at the same time critiquing an entire nation’s bad habits, in a way that did not turn the listener off to the point of distaste. He got his point across in a very clear articulate manner without ever coming across angrier than an upset yet stern father.

Part 1:

Quote 1: “Oppression makes a wise man mad. Your fathers were wise men, and if they did not go mad, they became restive under this treatment. They felt themselves the victims of grievous wrongs, wholly incurable in their colonial capacity. With brave men there is always a remedy for oppression”

Rephase: Wise men are mad due to unjust treatment. Your fathers were wise men and if they never were mad it was because they became restless to this behavior.  They felt themselves the victims of grievous, wrongfulness , wholly incurable in their colonial content . With brave men there is always therapeutic for oppression ” 11

Response: This quote from Douglass’ speech caught my attention because he says that oppression is what makes a wise man mad. I couldn’t agree more with those words because who are they to be treated in an unjust and controlling way. He speaks upon all the men who were victims of such wrongful acts. 

Quote 2: “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.”10

Rephase: American slaves see the 4th of July as injustice, cruel , a joke and an insult to them. The remembrance of  the 4th of july  only reminds slaves about the misery, the white people have done to them. This particular day is the day no slave would ever want to celebrate.

Response: Douglass shows his emotion on how angry he is about the mistreatment of colored people. When he was  asked to talk about the great 4th of July, he got very fierce because people of color are not considered to have any part in this celebration. He points out that people of color do not enjoy this day as how white people do, due to the past of independence day. 

Part 2:

Quote 1: “This celebration also marks the beginning of another year of your national life; and reminds you that the Republic of America is now 76 years old. I am glad, fellow-citizens, that your nation is soyoung. Seventy-six years, though a good old age for a man, is but a mere speck in the life of a nation. Three score years and ten is the allotted time for individual men; but nations number their years by thousands. According to this fact, you are, even now, only in the beginning of you[r] national career, still lingering in the period of childhood. I repeat, I am glad this is so. There is hope in the thought, and hope is much needed, under the dark clouds which lower above the horizon. The eye of the reformer is met with angry flashes, portending disastrous times; but his heart may well beat lighter at the thought that America is young, and that she is still in the impressible stage of her existence.” 

Response: Douglas used many strategies in this piece of quote, but one specifically that caught my attention is that even though he shows there is a problem, he manages to still stay positive. Which makes the speech as perfect as it is. 

Quote 2: “But, your fathers, who had not adopted the fashionable idea of this day, of the infallibility of government, and the absolute character of its acts, presumed to differ from the home government in respect to the wisdom and the justice of some of those burdens and restraints. They went so far in their excitement as to pronounce the measures of government unjust, unreasonable, and oppressive, and altogether such as ought not to be quietly submitted to.”6
Response: The strategy Douglass used in this paragraph caught my attention because it shows he respects “your fathers” even though they don’t understand the idea of what july 4th is about. Even though the celebrations feel like disrespect to people of color.

-Rania Mohamed