Levi Jordan & Varner-Hogg Plantations Virtual Book Club

What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? by Frederick Douglass
This speech was given at a meeting of the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society on July 5, 1852, in hopes of celebrating the 4th of July. Instead, Douglass draws upon his own experiences as an escaped slave and exposes the hypocrisy of America’s claim to Christian and democratic ideals despite its legacy of enslavement. The speech helped inspire the burgeoning abolitionist movement, which fought tirelessly for emancipation in the following decade leading up to the Civil War.