🕯️Mourning in America
On July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass stood before a crowd in Rochester, New York, and delivered a message that pierced the American conscience: “This Fourth of July is yours, not mine.” While the nation celebrated liberty, Douglass mourned its failure to extend that liberty to all. His speech, What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?, was not a condemnation of hope, it was a lamentation of hypocrisy.