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