WORTH REPEATING: EXCERPT FROM FREDERICK DOUGLASS
From the editor - Carlos T Mock
For those who still insist on keeping The GLBT Community as second class citizens in America, let these words shame them out of their cruelty. History tends to repeat itself.
WORTH REPEATING: EXCERPT FROM FREDERICK DOUGLASS
Freedom in America: A `hollow mockery'
Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune
Published July 2, 2006
As our nation celebrates its 230th 4th of July, it should be remembered that freedom has always been a fluid notion in this country, shifting shape in many ways over the years.
One of the most eloquent speeches to address this idea was delivered on July 5, 1852, by former slave Frederick Douglass, at a meeting sponsored by the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society in Rochester, N.Y. An excerpt follows:
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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 sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, 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 these United States, at this very hour.
Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.
For those who still insist on keeping The GLBT Community as second class citizens in America, let these words shame them out of their cruelty. History tends to repeat itself.
WORTH REPEATING: EXCERPT FROM FREDERICK DOUGLASS
Freedom in America: A `hollow mockery'
Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune
Published July 2, 2006
As our nation celebrates its 230th 4th of July, it should be remembered that freedom has always been a fluid notion in this country, shifting shape in many ways over the years.
One of the most eloquent speeches to address this idea was delivered on July 5, 1852, by former slave Frederick Douglass, at a meeting sponsored by the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society in Rochester, N.Y. An excerpt follows:
----------
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 sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, 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 these United States, at this very hour.
Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.
posted by Carlos T Mock at 9:22 AM
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