Declaration Project

“What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” – Frederick Douglass, July 5, 1852

Editor’s Note: Black Americans did not celebrate the 4th of July until the Emancipation Proclamation was issued by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863. In this no-holds-barred essay, Frederick Douglass, who became one of our great intellectuals, social reformers, and abolitionist leaders after escaping slavery, spells out why Independence Day was a mockery to […]