Independence Day:
"What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?"
July 6, 2025
On July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass gave a keynote address at an Independence Day celebration and asked, "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" Douglass was a powerful orator, often traveling six months out of the year to give lectures on abolition. His speech, given at an event commemorating the signing of the Declaration of Independence, was scathing in which he stated, "This Fourth of July is yours, not mine, You may rejoice, I must mourn." . . . Douglass stated that the nation's founders were great men for their ideals of freedom. But in doing so he brings awareness to the hypocrisy of their ideals by the existence of slavery on American soil.
The speech will be the jumping off point for story sharing, and engaged structure dialogue based on the Story Circle process originally developed in the 1970's by the Free Southern Theater and John O'Neill.
