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 sound of rejoicing are empty and heartless;
your denunciation of tyrants brass fronted impudence;
your shout of liberty and equality, hollow mockery;
your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanks-givings, 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 the United States,
at this very hour.
