"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
sound of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your
denunciation of tyrants brass fronted impudence;
your shout of liberty and equality, hollow mockery;
your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanks-givings,
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. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of
practices more shocking and bloody than are the people
of the United States, at this very hour." - Frederick Douglass "

- Frederick Douglass

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