‘What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?’

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Dozens gathered at Oak Bluffs’ Inkwell Beach Tuesday to participate in the annual reading of escaped slave turned abolitionist Frederick Douglass’ speech “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” 

This has been a tradition of the Renaissance House, a retreat for writers focused on social justice issues, for more than 20 years.

The recording of Tuesday’s address, filmed by MVTV, is set to be released online.

“People have asked, ‘Why don’t you celebrate Juneteenth or July Fourth?’ as if we have to choose one or the other. Neither one of which have been particularly good for people of color; however, there is hope,” said Abigail McGrath, writer and founder of Renaissance House and organizer of Tuesday’s event. “People are thinking about it, and it’s being addressed. That’s what we’re doing today.”

What McGrath called “one of the greatest speeches ever written in the English language,” Douglass’ “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” was first heard at an Independence Day celebration hosted by the Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society in Rochester, N.Y., 171 years ago.

The Oak Bluffs tradition of reciting Douglass’ words is both powerful and meaningful, McGrath said. It sheds light on “how brave a person can be to have this line of thoughts, and say it out loud,” she said. McGrath said it’s especially poignant considering that Dougass’ speech on “independence” preceded the abolition of slavery by over a decade.

Although the celebration — and Douglass’ keynote address — took place on July 5, 1852, the speech has become an integral part of Independence Day traditions around the country.

Through both heat and periodic rainfall Tuesday midday, Islanders and visitors huddled by Inkwell Beach access watched dozens of readers take turns reading excerpts from Douglass’ historic 10,000-plus-word speech.

In his address, Douglass points out the hypocrisy of many American ideals, specifically the country’s founders’ concept of freedom, and the meaning of the Declaration of Independence as African Americans continued to experience rampant inequality and injustice. 

“What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence?” Douglass asks in his address. “Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? And am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?” 

 “I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us.

“What, to the American slave, is your Fourth 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 denunciation 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 the United States, at this very hour.”

As readers and supporters gathered to bear witness to the annual recitation, longtime resident Jessica B. Harris, Ph.D, who’s been participating in the annual event since its inception, highlighted the meaning behind the words she was set to speak.

This year, the excerpt Harris chose to read, in which Douglass speaks of what was at the time an “especially prosperous” American slave trade, is in dedication to her great-great grandmother, a victim of the the internal American slave trade in Virginia. The fate of Harris’ great-grandmother is unknown to this day.

“This is in honor of her,” she said.