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

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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.
What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July?
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?