On this day in American History – July 5, 1852 — Frederick Douglass gives his famous speech, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”

One hundred and sixty-eight years ago today Frederick Douglass gave his famous speech, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”

douglass-large

Douglass was born into slavery in 1818, the product of a white male raping a Black woman.

White men raping Black women happened for centuries.  Dutch artist, Christiaen van Coubwenberg, captures this in a painting completed in 1632.  Note that the Dutch played a prominent role in the Transatlantic Slave Trade.

1024px-Rape_of_the_negro_girl_mg_0026

 

Advertisement

About William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

Award-winning poet, playwright and writer. Author of three books of poetry, "Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass: Remembrance of Things Past and Present"; "Sometimes Blue Knights Wear Black Hats"; "The Black Feminine Mystique," and a novel, "Streets of Rage." All four books are available on Amazon.com.
This entry was posted in Black patriotism, Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass, Lest We Forget, Patriotism, Politics, race, Slavery and tagged , , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s