Frederick Douglass: "What, to the American Slave, is your 4th of July?"

 

Frederick Douglass, circa 1879
(National Archives and Records Administration, Public Domain)

Here's Frederick Douglass, 169 years ago today, on 5 July 1852, speaking to the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society : 

Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? 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? …

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 denunciations 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.  

In his address, Douglass takes special aim at the Fugitive Slave Act, enacted on 18 September 1850 as part of the Compromise of 1850, which required slaves to be returned to their owners even if they had escaped to free states. In particular, he derides those "Divines" or theologians who defended, not only the law, but the institution of slavery as well:*

I take this law to be one of the grossest infringements of Christian Liberty, and, if the churches and ministers of our country were not stupidly blind, or most wickedly indifferent, they, too, would so regard it.

At the very moment that they are thanking God for the enjoyment of civil and religious liberty, and for the right to worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences, they are utterly silent in respect to a law which robs religion of its chief significance, and makes it utterly worthless to a world lying in wickedness. Did this law concern the “mint, anise, and cumin” — abridge the right to sing psalms, to partake of the sacrament, or to engage in any of the ceremonies of religion, it would be smitten by the thunder of a thousand pulpits. A general shout would go up from the church, demanding repeal, repeal, instant repeal! — And it would go hard with that politician who presumed to solicit the votes of the people without inscribing this motto on his banner. Further, if this demand were not complied with, another Scotland would be added to the history of religious liberty, and the stern old Covenanters would be thrown into the shade. A John Knox would be seen at every church door, and heard from every pulpit, and Fillmore would have no more quarter than was shown by Knox, to the beautiful, but treacherous queen Mary of Scotland. The fact that the church of our country, (with fractional exceptions), does not esteem “the Fugitive Slave Law” as a declaration of war against religious liberty, implies that that church regards religion simply as a form of worship, an empty ceremony, and not a vital principle, requiring active benevolence, justice, love and good will towards man. It esteems sacrifice above mercy; psalm-singing above right doing; solemn meetings above practical righteousness. A worship that can be conducted by persons who refuse to give shelter to the houseless, to give bread to the hungry, clothing to the naked, and who enjoin obedience to a law forbidding these acts of mercy, is a curse, not a blessing to mankind. The Bible addresses all such persons as “scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites, who pay tithe of mint, anise, and cumin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy and faith.”

But the church of this country is not only indifferent to the wrongs of the slave, it actually takes sides with the oppressors. It has made itself the bulwark of American slavery, and the shield of American slave-hunters. Many of its most eloquent Divines. who stand as the very lights of the church, have shamelessly given the sanction of religion and the Bible to the whole slave system. They have taught that man may, properly, be a slave; that the relation of master and slave is ordained of God; that to send back an escaped bondman to his master is clearly the duty of all the followers of the Lord Jesus Christ; and this horrible blasphemy is palmed off upon the world for Christianity.

For my part, I would say, welcome infidelity! welcome atheism! welcome anything! in preference to the gospel, as preached by those Divines! They convert the very name of religion into an engine of tyranny, and barbarous cruelty, and serve to confirm more infidels, in this age, than all the infidel writings of Thomas Paine, Voltaire, and Bolingbroke, put together, have done! 

(Read the entire speech here.)

Years ago I wrote a piece, based on the Apostle Paul's paraenesis in Romans 13, entitled "Why I Don't Celebrate the Fourth of July". I still stand by what I wrote then (where the rubber hits the road: working within the system to rectify wrongs and, if necessary, nonviolent civil disobedience, yes; armed revolution, no). Nevertheless, one would be perverse to deny the power of Thomas Jefferson's exalted rhetoric in the Declaration of Independence, adopted in Philadelphia on 4 July 1776, to the effect that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness." I am proud to be an American because of this very ideological commitment, which has benefitted the world more than any words of mine could adequately convey. Nevertheless …

The problem then, as now, is that these great words were not applied to people across the board. African slaves and the millions of indigenous Americans living on the Continent were not afforded these rights. What pangs of conscience many of the founders felt about this hypocrisy were conveniently suppressed, only to be alleviated more than 80 years later by the horrors and bloodshed of the Civil War. Even then, it wasn't until 1964―during my own lifetime!―that racial, religious, and sexual discrimination were finally proscribed legally in my country. And yet, as anybody with eyes to see recognizes, systemic injustice continues to exist, denied only by those for whom such denial is politically, socially, and/or economically convenient.** Matters have not been helped by the so-called "conservative" majority of the Supreme Court, who eviscerated the 1965 Voting Rights Act with their unconscionable, and legally dubious, Shelby County v. Holder decision in 2013, and did even more damage to the Law by upholding Arizona's freshly-minted voter restrictions in last week's party-line Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee decision. All people's votes are equal according to the law, but it is more than apparent that some people's votes are more equal than others.

I write this, not (entirely) to be contrary, but rather to hammer home the illegitimacy of a certain right-wing view of what "patriotism" entails. Patriotism is not to be confused with "Nationalism," which, in its blind adherence to a mythical narrative of American righteousness and faith in some hazily defined and unhistorical notion of American "exceptionalism," amounts to little more than a form of low-rent idolatry. By contrast, "Patriotism," rightly understood, entails both pride in the nation's ostensible values as well as criticism of it when it fails to live up to those ideals, in hope of goading it to repentance and faithfulness to those ideals.

Of course, not all see it that way. I am 64 years old, and I well remember the outcry over John Carlos' and Tommie Smith's black power salutes on the Olympic Medal platform at Mexico City in 1968 (with the approval of Australia's silver medal-winning Peter Norman). I remember the criticism Vietnam protesters received from Nixon supporters over their opposition to a war America should never have prosecuted ("America: Love it or Leave it;" alas, Mike Stivic's lectures to Archie Bunker in Norman Lear's All in the Family should have nipped this hollow criticism in the bud). More recently, I am flabbergasted with the abuse and blacklisting of former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick for his kneeling during the playing of the Star-Spangled Banner before games to highlight the continued racism in American society (i.e., America's not living up to its stated ideals; the question left unanswered, of course, is this: Why is the anthem even played before games? How is it even remotely relevant?). Most recently, the same faux "outrage" and criticism was leveled against American hammer thrower Gwen Berry for turning away from the flag after her 3rd place finish in the recent 2021 Olympic trials (For her "sin," Texas―where else?―congressman Dan Crenshaw wants her kicked off the team).

More insidiously, manufactured "conservative" outrage over "Critical Race Theory" and the New York Times's "1619 Project"―not to mention hilariously wrong-headed reactions such as Donald Trump's "1776 Commission" and Texas's "1836 Project"―manifest a willingness to double down on whitewashed mythology when genuine American history proves too uncomfortable. Such "conservative" snowflakes, in the words of Jack Nicholson's Col. Jessup in A Few Good Men, "can't handle the truth."

But here's the point: Both verbal and symbolic criticism of America's shortcomings do not evince a dearth of patriotism. Criticism of American hypocrisy and failures does not equal "hatred" of America. What such criticism demonstrates is that the critic believes in American ideals and is calling the nation to faithfulness to their stated ideological commitments.*** In other words, such criticism is, in point of fact, evidence of the presence, rather than the lack, of patriotism. And it is, at the very least, bad form for men and women, who are the beneficiaries of both the acknowledged and unacknowledged privilege our country affords to white people, to condemn minority populations for their criticism of the country for reneging on its promise of "liberty and justice for all." After all, such "liberty and justice" are what they are entitled to. Moreover, the very constitution such "conservatives" claim to love guarantees the right of these people to air these criticisms. And that's nothing more than the great Frederick Douglass, on explicitly Christian grounds, did in his speech 169 years ago. "Liberty and justice for all." That's what America stands for. Here's to hoping that it will make strides in this direction in this, its 246th year.

*Alas, defense of slavery and sympathy for the Confederacy that championed it did not die out among theologians with the loss of the Civil War, or even the 19th century when the institution was overturned. Most disappointing to me was the Highland Scot John Murray, perhaps the greatest Presbyterian theologian of the 20th century after Benjamin Warfield. In his 1957 book of lectures entitled Principles of Conduct, Murray argued that the Bible endorsed the institution, lamely defining slavery as the property of one man in the labor of another, ignoring the quite obvious fact that slavery, by definition, involves the ownership of the person as well as the person's labor. This was true, not only in American chattel slavery, but in the more variegated institution encountered by Paul in the Roman Empire as well. Cf. Murray, Principles of Conduct: Aspects of Biblical Ethics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1957) 93-102.

**Years ago, my brother and I made a pilgrimage to the boyhood home of our basketball hero, Wilt Chamberlain, in the working class and almost entirely African American Haddington section of West Philadelphia. Driving back to the Main Line, we passed over City Avenue into Lower Merion Township on Haverford Road, a mere 2 miles away, where the large homes on tree-lined streets of almost entirely white households dominated the landscape. This, to me, was as illuminating as any academic treatise. What was it that caused the glaring disparity? The answer was obvious, obscure only to those for whom such obtuseness is existentially convenient.

***For Christians who deem the Bible to be their supreme authority (derived, of course, from God, who we believe inspired it), consider the role of the prophets, from Moses to Elijah to Amos to Isaiah to Jeremiah and Ezekiel to John the Baptizer and Jesus himself. Did their sometimes harsh words and symbolic acts pointing to Israel's covenant unfaithfulness mean that they "hated" the nation or its people? No answer is required. Such prophetic calls are in the service of enforcing covenant commitments. It takes no great leap of the imagination to understand verbal and symbolic calls for equality and justice in America today as analogous to these biblical prophetic voices.