What To The Slave Is The Fourth Of July Essay

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The Abolitionist, Frederick Douglas once quoted“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.”That quote was said in Rochester, New York on July 5, 1852 during a speech titled What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? which was given to a sympathetic abolitionist society called Rochester Ladies Anti-Slavery Society to emphasize the subject of American slavery.In the speech Douglas gives life to the purpose of addressing the injustice, persecution, and oppression being made towards slaves in America, by using a demanding and annoyed tone, as well as two rhetorical devices, metaphor and rhetorical questions.

Frederick Douglass directly conveys the purpose and his opinion of the topic his is presenting during his speech by having two …show more content…
Throughout the entire speech Douglas asks his audience a variety of rhetorical questions for various reasons, one of the main reasons is to ask if freedom is extended to African Americans, he states Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? To break down the quote more thoroughly Douglas is basically asking the audience if blacks (“us”) have the same political freedoms that whites have are which are stated in the Declaration of Independence. Which basically he’s basically looking for the answer “no”. Douglas states a powerful and symbolic metaphors about the happiness of whites,but death of blacks. He states “The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me.” This quote is basically comparing sunlight to a whip because while sunlight has brought a sense of authority to whites, it hurts and maltreats

Analysis Of What To The Slave Is The Fourth Of July

African-American social reformer and abolitionist, Frederick Douglass, in his speech, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” recounts his perspective on what fourth of July means to African-American’s while speaking in front of white Americans about a holiday that was put into place to represent the independence and freedom of America. As an astonishing writer Mr. Douglass uses many powerful phrases and words to describe the way he is feeling and how he wants to get an idea across a group of…

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