In 1852, well before the Civil War and the first Juneteenth, Frederick Douglass asked a question, "What to the slave is the Fourth of July?" and spoke about it. Decades after emancipation, we continue to struggle with the issues that Douglass raised in that powerful and compelling oration.
Over the last couple of years, as this blog reveals through a search, I have read, while skimming through at some places, Douglass' speech. It is powerful. It is moving.
This essay about Douglass' speech focuses on the line "By the Rivers of Babylon":
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?”.Until I came across Douglass' "What to the slave is the Fourth of July?", I had never given a second thought to a disco song by the group Boney M that begins with By the rivers of Babylon! It is amazing to realize that even a disco song could have taught me history lessons if I had paid attention to what the lyrics were and the story about those lyrics!
In the school days in Neyveli, my friend and classmate, Chandru, had a record player, which was a big deal. Most of our homes had old style valve radios. A few had the modern transistor radios. Homes with vinyl or cassette players were rare. Chandru's parents had a record player, in which he once played their latest acquisition, which was an LP of a music group called ABBA. And soon after that, I came to know the music of another group, Boney M, and one of their hits that began with "By the rivers of Babylon ..."
More than 30 years after high school ended, I found out more on that verse By the rivers of Babylon. It is from "a biblical Psalm – Psalm 137."
It is that same Psalm that Frederick Douglass evokes in his oration.
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.
It will be a gross injustice to excerpt even a single sentence from Douglass' speech. With all the apologies, 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.Here is to wishing that progress will accelerate after which we can truly retire the 2,500-year-old Hebrew psalm to history and not recall it in struggles for freedom.
Descendants of Frederick Douglass deliver his famous “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” speech https://t.co/JtEv9LvMq6
— philip lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) July 4, 2022
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