Frederick Douglass, a self-emancipated freedman, delivers his “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” speech” to the Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society in Rochester, New York:

       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.  There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.

       [added 2/11/2022] Thanks to Freedom’s Phoenix for this entry.

Subsequent Events:

7/6/1852                   5/24/1854                  7/4/1854                   2/6/1855

Authority:

References:

Calvin D. Linton, ed. The Bicentennial Almanac: 200 Years of America, 1776-1976, (Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, 1975), 141.

Why You Should Read “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” to Your Kids – Foundation for Economic Education
fee.org/articles/why-you-should-read-what-to-the-slave-is-the-fourth-of-july-to-your-kids/

Current U.s. National Debt:

$36,167,124,467,492

Source