The Best 4th Of July Was On The Fifth! (Here's Why)

 (Post Holiday Op-Ed)

Fourth of July speeches tend to divide into two sorts. The predominant variety is celebratory, and prescriptive—solemnized, as John Adams predicted in 1776, “with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations from one end of this continent to the other.”

But in his exuberance, Adams failed to anticipate that the Fourth, as it brought Americans together, would continually threaten to tear them apart. As it is currently doing today by-the-way. Over the years, celebrations of the Fourth have become a periodic tug of war between commemorations designed to affirm and even enforce the common identity of Americans—out of many, one—and subversive pushback from those unruly enough to insist that we are not all free, emphatically not all equal, and certainly not one. For further evidence of this just look what this country has experienced as of this first-half of this 2020 year.

But by the Declaration’s 50^th anniversary, celebrations commonly included the firing of artillery at sunrise, the marching of volunteer companies, the ringing of church bells, and the parading of labor associations an nowadays in most major cities rawkus celebratory gun-fire the night of this American holiday.

In Rochester, New York, on July 5, 1852. There was the former slave and ardent abolitionist Frederick Douglass who published his newspaper called the North Star. Douglass was a good friend of Susan B. just to add a bit of background context here.

Douglass was asked to provide an oration for Independence Day during this time and here’s a condensed overview of some key points he made. It went a lil something like this. Read carefully all ye misinformed and mis-educated  new crop of woke folks.

The smooth orator Douglass stalked his largely white audience with exquisite care, taking them by stealth. He began by providing what many listeners might not have expected from a notorious abolitionist:

The day brought forth “demonstrations of joyous enthusiasm,” he told them, for the signers of the Declaration were “brave men.'' They were great men too—great enough to give fame to a great age.” Jefferson’s very words echoed in Douglass’s salute: “Your fathers staked their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, on the cause of their country … ”

Your fathers. 

But Douglass continued cordially. “Friends and citizens, I need not enter further into the causes which led to this anniversary. Many of you understand them better than I do.” Then another step back: “That is a branch of knowledge in which you feel, perhaps, a much deeper interest than your speaker.”

Now his parched  humor was edging into view: accompanied, no doubt, by that peculiar twist of the mouth. As a people, Americans were never shy about proclaiming “the facts which make in their favor,” Douglass noted; indeed, bragging about their reputation was often deemed a national virtue. It might equally be accounted a national vice, he continued slyly; but in deference to that habit, he pledged to leave any further praise of the Revolution to “other gentlemen whose claim to have been regularly descended [from their Founding Fathers] will be less likely to be disputed than mine!”

Now he strikes a more serious tone. It was all well and good to sing the praises of past heroes; but his business, Douglass insisted, “if I have any here to-day, is with the present.” Those who praised the hard-won deeds of the founders had no right to do so unless they too were ready to work for the cause of liberty. “You have no right to wear out and waste the hard-earned fame of your fathers to cover your indolence.”

Then he threw down one question after another, each red-hot as a brand from the burning: “Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? … This Fourth [of] July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day?”

But what reasoned argument remained to be made? “Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? That he is the rightful owner of his own body? You have already declared it. Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? … To do so, would be to make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your understanding.”

What, am I to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant of their relations to their fellow men, to beat them with sticks, to flay their flesh with the lash, to load their limbs with irons, to hunt them with dogs, to sell them at auction, to sunder their families, to knock out their teeth, to burn their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters? Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood, and stained with pollution, is wrong? …

During these tumultuous times of unmitigated hate and unjustifiable modern lynching of African Americans in broad daylight, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. One noted irony today is a segment of this country will proclaims justice and liberty for all while stating to be God fearing still adamantly refuse to openly refute their past and present hypocrisies. Making America Great Again is their motto I believe. And even worse than that, there are still African Americans proclaiming over 170 years after that speech due to ignorance or maybe apathy still do not care to research the actual facts of what they still die to celebrate zealously and spend their hard-earned money on. There are different levels of conciseness (knowledge of self) and to my woke folks reading this, eye love you, but we gotta start acknowledging these things..not for the sake of argument but for the sake of souls and FACTS!! Not your average Dj..

Peace Tuc

This originally appeared on Slate and was published July 2, 2015. This article is republished here and condensed re-edited exclusively by Dj Tuc for djtuc999dotcom for informative, educational and entertainment purposes only.
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