Daily Kos has a post about Frederick Douglass’ Independence Day,
1852 speech. This is the speech in which Douglass declared,
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. The Washington Post has an
editorial, which I urge you to read in full, about an integrated
militia that fought in the War of 1812: Andrew Jackson won with
a somewhat motley, outnumbe