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Primary Sources- Famous Speeches: Frederick Douglass' "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July"

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Last updated 12 months ago
3 questions
Note from the author:
Read the passage Famous Speeches: Frederick Douglass' "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July". Then answer the questions below.
Read the passage Famous Speeches: Frederick Douglass' "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July". Then answer the questions below.
Required
1
D2.His.10.6-8
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D2.His.4.6-8
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D2.His.13.6-8
Question 1
1.

Which historical question does this source BEST help to answer?

Question 2
2.

What reasons did former slave Frederick Douglass use to support his argument against the celebration of the Fourth of July while slavery still existed? Select two correct answers.

Question 3
3.

Drag each sentence from the text into the correct box to show whether the sentence demonstrated Douglass' perspective towards the institution of slavery or his perspective towards the celebration of American independence.

  • It is admitted in the fact that Southern laws forbid the teaching of the slave to read and write.
  • America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future.
  • Is it wrong to keep them ignorant, to beat them with sticks, to strike their flesh with the lash, to put them in chains?
  • What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July?
  • To drag a man in chains into the grand temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in happy song, is inhuman mockery.
He highlighted that millions of Americans are still enslaved.
He blamed abolitionists for not freeing enslaved people.
He stated that it violated Christian values to celebrate the Fourth of July.
He argued that enslaved people considered the Fourth of July as a symbol of their own liberation and used it to inspire hope for their future freedom.
Douglass' perspective on the institution of slavery
Douglass' perspective on the celebration of American independence