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From Frederick Douglass:
"The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro"
Fellow Citizens, I am not wanting in respect
for the fathers of this republic. The signers of the Declaration of Independence were brave men. They were great men, too
Ñ great enough to give frame to a great age. It does not often happen to a nation to raise, at one time, such a number of
truly great men. The point from which I am compelled to view them is not, certainly, the most favorable; and yet I cannot
contemplate their great deeds with less than admiration. They were statesmen, patriots and heroes, and for the good they did,
and the principles they contended for, I will unite with you to honor their memory....
...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?
Would to God, both for your sakes
and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions! Then would my task be light, and my
burden easy and delightful. For who is there so cold, that a nation's sympathy could not warm him? Who so obdurate and dead
to the claims of gratitude, that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? Who so stolid and selfish, that
would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nation's jubilee, when the chains of servitude had been torn from his
limbs? I am not that man. In a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak, and the "lame man leap as an hart."
But
such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale
of glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which
you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common.ÑThe rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence,
bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought light and healing to you, has brought stripes
and death to me. This Fourth July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand
illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony.
Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. And let me warn
you that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation whose crimes, towering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath
of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrevocable ruin! I can to-day take up the plaintive lament of a peeled and woe-smitten
people!
"By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Yea! we wept when we remembered Zion. We hanged
our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there, they that carried us away captive, required of us a song; and
they who wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How can we sing the Lord's song in a strange
land? If I forget thee, 0 Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave
to the roof of my mouth."
Fellow-citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions!
whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them.
If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, "may my right hand forget her
cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!" To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime
in with the popular theme, would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the
world. My subject, then, fellow-citizens, is American slavery. I shall see this day and its popular characteristics from the
slave's point of view. Standing there identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare,
with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July! Whether
we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous
and revolting. America.is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Standing
with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name
of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the constitution and the Bible which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare
to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery Ñ the
great sin and shame of America! "I will not equivocate; I will not excuse"; I will use the severest language I can command;
and yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart a slaveholder,
shall not confess to be right and just.
But I fancy I hear some one of my audience say, "It is just in this circumstance
that you and your brother abolitionists fail to make a favorable impression on the public mind. Would you argue more, an denounce
less; would you persuade more, and rebuke less; your cause would be much more likely to succeed." But, I submit, where all
is plain there is nothing to be argued. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? On what branch of the
subject do the people of this country need light? Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That point is conceded
already. Nobody doubts it. The slaveholders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. They
acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. There are seventy-two crimes in the State of Virginia
which, if committed by a black man (no matter how ignorant he be), subject him to the punishment of death; while only two
of the same crimes will subject a white man to the like punishment. What is this but the acknowledgment that the slave is
a moral, intellectual, and responsible being? The manhood of the slave is conceded. It is admitted in the fact that Southern
statute books are covered with enactments forbidding, under severe fines and penalties, the teaching of the slave to read
or to write. When you can point to any such laws in reference to the beasts of the field, then I may consent to argue the
manhood of the slave. When the dogs in your streets, when the fowls of the air, when the cattle on your hills, when the fish
of the sea, and the reptiles that crawl, shall be unable to distinguish the slave from a brute, then will I argue with you
that the slave is a man!
For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. Is it not astonishing
that, while we are ploughing, planting, and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges,
building ships, working in metals of brass, iron, copper, silver and gold; that, while we are reading, writing and ciphering,
acting as clerks, merchants and secretaries, having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators
and teachers; that, while we are engaged in all manner of enterprises common to other men, digging gold in California, capturing
the whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hill-side, living, moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in
families as husbands, wives and children, and, above all, confessing and worshipping the Christian's God, and looking hopefully
for life and immortality beyond the grave, we are called upon to prove that we are men!
Would you have me argue that
man is entitled to liberty? that he is the rightful owner of his own body? You have already declared it. Must I argue the
wrongfulness of slavery? Is that a question for Republicans? Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation,
as a matter beset with great difficulty, involving a doubtful application of the principle of justice, hard to be understood?
How should I look to-day, in the presence of Amercans, dividing, and subdividing a discourse, to show that men have a natural
right to freedom? speaking of it relatively and positively, negatively and affirmatively. To do so, would be to make myself
ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your understanding. There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven that does not know
that slavery is wrong for him.
What, am I to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty,
to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant of their relations to their fellow men, to beat them with sticks, to flay
their flesh with the lash, to load their limbs with irons, to hunt them with dogs, to sell them at auction, to sunder their
families, to knock out their teeth, to burn their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their mastcrs? Must
I argue that a system thus marked with blood, and stained with pollution, is wrong? No! I will not. I have better employment
for my time and strength than such arguments would imply.
What, then, remains to be argued? Is it that slavery is not
divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? There is blasphemy in the thought. That
which is inhuman, cannot be divine! Who can reason on such a proposition? They that can, may; I cannot. The time for such
argument is passed.
At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability,
and could reach the nation's ear, I would, to-day, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering
sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need
the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must
be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against
God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.
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.
Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the Old
World, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side
of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy,
America reigns without a rival....
...Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this
day presented, of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country. There are forces in operation which must inevitably
work the downfall of slavery. "The arm of the Lord is not shortened," and the doom of slavery is certain. I, therefore, leave
off where I began, with hope. While drawing encouragement from "the Declaration of Independence," the great principles it
contains, and the genius of American Institutions, my spirit is also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age. Nations
do not now stand in the same relation to each other that they did ages ago. No nation can now shut itself up from the surrounding
world and trot round in the same old path of its fathers without interference. The time was when such could be done. Long
established customs of hurtful character could formerly fence themselves in, and do their evil work with social impunity.
Knowledge was then confined and enjoyed by the privileged few, and the multitude walked on in mental darkness. But a change
has now come over the affairs of mankind. Walled cities and empires have become unfashionable. The arm of commerce has borne
away the gates of the strong city. Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners of the globe. It makes its pathway over
and under the sea, as well as on the earth. Wind, steam, and lightning are its chartered agents. Oceans no longer divide,
but link nations together. From Boston to London is now a holiday excursion. Space is comparatively annihilated. -- Thoughts
expressed on one side of the Atlantic are distinctly heard on the other.
The far off and almost fabulous Pacific rolls
in grandeur at our feet. The Celestial Empire, the mystery of ages, is being solved. The fiat of the Almighty, "Let there
be Light," has not yet spent its force. No abuse, no outrage whether in taste, sport or avarice, can now hide itself from
the all-pervading light. The iron shoe, and crippled foot of China must be seen in contrast with nature. Africa must rise
and put on her yet unwoven garment. 'Ethiopia, shall, stretch. out her hand unto Ood." In the fervent aspirations of William
Lloyd Garrison, I say, and let every heart join in saying it:
God speed the year of jubilee The wide world o'er! When
from their galling chains set free, Th' oppress'd shall vilely bend the knee, And wear the yoke of tyranny Like brutes
no more. That year will come, and freedom's reign, To man his plundered rights again Restore.
God speed the
day when human blood Shall cease to flow! In every clime be understood, The claims of human brotherhood, And each
return for evil, good, Not blow for blow; That day will come all feuds to end, And change into a faithful friend Each
foe.
God speed the hour, the glorious hour, When none on earth Shall exercise a lordly power, Nor in a tyrant's
presence cower; But to all manhood's stature tower, By equal birth! That hour will come, to each, to all, And
from his Prison-house, to thrall Go forth.
Until that year, day, hour, arrive, With head, and heart, and hand
I'll strive, To break the rod, and rend the gyve, The spoiler of his prey deprive -- So witness Heaven! And never
from my chosen post, Whate'er the peril or the cost, Be driven.
The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass, Volume II Pre-Civil War Decade 1850-1860 Philip S. Foner International
Publishers Co., Inc., New York, 1950
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12 rules to success
Old fashioned. Not relevant. Stupid. These are
some of the adjectives that might be applied to the 12 rules of conduct espoused by Nannie Helen Burroughs (1879-1961) way
back when, but think again. Today as thousands of our young men and women leave college and begin their search for jobs, it
might not be a bad idea to take a second look at these rules which have carpeted the road to success for many young adults.
Miss Burroughs, who came to Washington, D.C. at an early age and graduated with high honors from the old M Street High
School, wanted to become a domestic science teacher. She was turned down by the D.C. public school system despite her qualifications,
and later established the National Training School for Women and Girls in 1909; a private school still in existence today
under the name Nannie Helen Burroughs School, 601-50th St., N.E. Washington, D.C. Her rules might bring a smirk to your face
but on second thought, just imagine what would happen if just one fourth of our Black youth, and their parents, would take
some of them seriously. For better or for worse here are the 12 rules which can be found with detailed explanations in a pamphlet
published by the school.
Subject: 12 Things Nannie Helen Burroughs Said the Negro
Must Do.... By Nannie Helen Burroughs (Circa Early 1900's)
1. The Negro
must learn to put first things first. The first things are: education, development of character traits, a trade and
home ownership. 2. The Negro must stop expecting God and White folk to do for him
what he can do for himself. 3. The Negro must keep himself, his children and his home
clean and make the surroundings in which he lives comfortable and attractive. 4. The
Negro must learn to dress more appropriately for work and for leisure. 5. The Negro must make
his religion an everyday practice and not just a Sunday-go-to-meeting emotional affair. 6. The
Negro must highly resolve to wipe out mass ignorance. 7. The Negro must stop charging his failures
up to his "color" and to White people's attitude. 8. The Negro must overcome his bad job habits. 9. The Negro must improve his conduct in public places. 10. The Negro must
learn how to operate business for people -- not for Negro people, only. 11. The average so-called
educated Negro will have to come down out of the air. He is too inflated over nothing. He needs an experience similar
to the one that Ezekiel had --(Ezekiel 3:14-19). And he must do what Ezekiel did 12. The Negro
must stop forgetting his friends.
Reading these rules can explain why some African
Americans have made it and others have fallen by the wayside. One cannot have it both ways. Worthy of note are the students
seen on Morgan State University’s campus these past couple of weeks in their business suits who appeared to be heading
for job interviews. They have been taught that in today’s world the rule is to “dress for success” and look
and act like professionals. Also worthy of note are the young students going out for interviews for summer internships.
Employees are reporting that more are coming looking like they have been prepared for their interviews with a keen desire
to get the job. But, they say, there are far too many gum chewing, loud mouthed teens out here that seemed to feel someone
owes them something.
Black Child's Pledge
I pledge allegiance to my Black People. I pledge to develop my mind and body to the greatest
extent possible. I will learn all that I can in order to give my best to my People in their struggle for liberation. I
will keep myself physically fit, building a strong body free from drugs and other substances which weaken me and make me less
capable of protecting myself, my family and my Black brothers and sisters. I will unselfishly share my knowledge and understanding
with them in order to bring about change more quickly. I will discipline myself to direct my energies thoughtfully and
constructively rather than wasting them in idle hatred. I will train myself never to hurt or allow others to harm my Black
brothers and sisters for I recognize that we need every Black Man, Woman, and Child to be physically, mentally and psychologically
strong. These principles I pledge to practice daily and to teach them to others in order to unite my People.
BLACK HISTORY EVERY DAY
Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable... Every step toward the goal of justice requires
sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals." Not one dedicated
individual, but many -Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr
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