"To him, your celebration is a sham"

I blogged about Frederick Douglass' "What to the slave is the Fourth of July?" in 2017.

We continue to struggle with the issues that Douglass raised in that powerful and compelling oration.  The descendants of the enslaved people continue to be treated as less than equal, and all we can do is do our part to make sure that Black Lives Matter.

Meanwhile, the original people of this land, who were systematically wiped out by the settler whites, were put through another round of torture when tRump decided to hold a fireworks rally at Mt. Rushmore.  If you need a reminder on why that is painful site:

The insult of Rushmore to some Sioux is at least three-fold:
1. It was built on land the government took from them.
2. The Black Hills in particular are considered sacred ground.
3.The monument celebrates the European settlers who killed so many Native Americans and appropriated their land.

Sure, Washington and Jefferson owned human beings as property.  But, didn't Lincoln free the slaves?

Abraham Lincoln famously emancipated slaves, but he supported eradicating Indian tribes from western lands and approved America’s largest-ever mass execution, the hanging of 38 Dakota in Mankato for their alleged crimes in the 1862 war along the Minnesota River.
Teddy Roosevelt, in his “The Winning of the West,” wrote: “I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of every ten are … .”

All these bring me back to the Frederick Douglass speech.

Back in high school, my friend and classmate, Chandru, had a record player, in which he played for a couple of us who had gone over to his home an LP of a music group called ABBA.  And soon after that, I came to know the music of another group, Boney M, especially the one that began with "By the rivers of Babylon ..."  That opening line is from "a biblical Psalm – Psalm 137."

That tidbit is merely the starting point for my ignorance.  This essay begins with:

On the anniversary of America’s independence, the abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass made a biblical Psalm – Psalm 137 – best known for its opening line, “By the Rivers of Babylon,” a centerpiece of his most famous speech, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?”.
Douglass told the audience at Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York, on July 5, 1852, that for a free black like himself, being expected to celebrate American independence was akin to the Judean captives being mockingly coerced to perform songs in praise of Jerusalem.
Not only did it inspire the famous abolitionist; this 2,500-year-old Hebrew psalm has long served as an uplifting historical analogy for a variety of oppressed and subjugated groups, including African Americans.

I read Douglass' speech. Or, at least most of it.

It is powerful. It is moving. It is a must-read.

It will be a gross injustice to excerpt even a single sentence from that speech.  With all the apologies, and my ignorance as an excuse, I will wrap up this post with the following lines from Frederick Douglass:

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. 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.