FREDERICK DOUGLAS SPEAKS 4th U-Ly

[Baba Ahmed]

From: Alaman5375@aol.com
Date: July 1, 2007 11:27:06 AM EDT
To: undisclosed-recipients:;
Subject: POV: Should African Americans & Africans in America Celebrate July 4th?


Recently I was re-reading Dr. Asa Hilliard's book, "The Maroon Within Us", and was once again reminded of a major problem that African people in America are besieged by.
Dr. Hilliard described this problem as a cultural surrender. In explaining the problem, Dr. Hilliard wrote, "African Americans remain one of the very few groups in the United States who do not honor their own cultural traditions, sometimes even when they are honored by others."
Continuing on this point, Dr. Hilliard states that "If there is a major illness among Afrikan and Afrikan-American people it is that we unceasingly honor and utilize our culture less. All great nations and people do the opposite."
As Dr. Hilliard further explains, "Cultural surrender is more than a matter of rejecting one's father and mother culture. It means that one accepts a new definition as a person. The culturally dependent person is a mere spectator; a receptacle for the creativity's of others. To demand freedom from slavery only to use that freedom to commit one's self to a voluntary cultural servitude is to lose the chance to be human."
"The erosion of many of our African cultural traditions and foundations are most evidenced in our family and community life. Far too many African people in America are getting away from the essence of family life. One of the most important challenges we face as a people, is to continue our efforts at offsetting our continued miseducation of the contributions of African people from ancient times to the present in all subjects-such as mathematics, science, social studies, language arts, art, and music.
When we use the term education it is important that we define this term, that is so loosely used, to describe a process that has been established in the world for people to acquire levels of knowledge.
Education is a process or system that imparts the dominant values, principles, and beliefs of a given society. Training is the process of learning skills- such as reading, writing, and computation. So we must be clear that there is a difference between education and training.
It should be quite obvious to all conscious African people, in America that as
Dr. Carter G. Woodson pointed out in his book, "The Miseducation of the Negro" in 1933, that we have undergone a tremendous "miseducation".
Consider a few points that this great educator and historian made in this book, that should be required reading for all African people in America interested in the upliftment of the race. Dr. Woodson's analysis is still relevant today.
Dr. Woodson said, "the mere imparting of information is not education. Above all things, the effort must result in making a man or woman think and do for himself or herself just as the Jews have done in spite of universal persecution."
Dr. Woodson also said that, "Highly educated Negroes denounce persons who advocate for the Negro a sort of education different in some respects from that now given the white man. Negroes who have been so long inconvenienced and denied opportunities for development are naturally afraid of anything that sounds like discrimination. They are anxious to have everything the white man has even if it is harmful."
Further, Dr. Woodson observes, "...the so-called modern education with all its defects, however, does others so much more good that it does the Negro, because it has been worked out in conformity to the needs of those who have enslaved and oppressed weaker peoples."
For example, he says, " ... the philosophy and ethics resulting from our
Educational system has justified slavery, peonage, segregation and lynching. The oppressor has the right to exploit, to handicap, and to kill the oppressed." - Dr. Carter G. Woodson

The Negro, colored, Black, African-American) represents a step closer in recuperating from the psychological trauma of slavery. Yes, the physical chains of slavery are a product of the past. But the psychological effects still are present. To deny this would be to ignore the facts of history.
I recall comedian Richard Pryor saying that if you called a black person "African" they would be ready to fight. Pryor never elaborated why this occurred, but as my knowledge of world history increased, it became quite obvious to me. Our European (whites) captors taught us that Africa was a land of cannibals, beast, and "uncivilized" people. It was a strategic lie, used to mentally enslave African people. It worked, but the question remained for how long would the lie last? As Blacks began to internalize this negative view of Africa, they responded by disassociating themselves with "Africa"(i.e. African-American). Whoever would have guessed that "Africa," a word that could once provoke a fist fight, would someday be embraced by the masses?
To answer this question, one has to retrace the African devolution to Negro, and evolution to African-American. It was crucial in the enslavement process to extricate the cultural identity of the African. The natural trauma of slavery facilitated this process, but the captor's use of language to disorient Africans was equally effective. The word Negro was the initial process to extricate blacks from their cultural past. For the first wave of African captives in America, being called "Negro" was analogous to being hit in the head with a blunt instrument. To be a Negro was parallel to being in a state of amnesia. Negro is an artificial word that was assigned to Africans by their captors. Since there is no such place as "Negroland" that Negroes owned no land, had no history or future.
The word Negro is a Spanish word for the color Black. It is derived from the root of the Greek word "necro," meaning "dead." Now we know why the word "Negro" was given to enslaved Africans by their captors. Negro literally meant the mental and spiritual death of a people. When the name "Negro" finally was shed, it signaled an embryonic state of a spiritual and mental rebirth.

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Finally, Dr. Woodson explains that "No systematic effort toward change has been possible, for, taught the same economics, history, philosophy, literature, and religion which have established the present code of morals, the Negro's mind has been brought under the control of his oppressor. The problem of holding the Negro down, therefore, is easily solved. When you control a man's thinking you do not have to worry about his actions."
Because of what we see of ourselves often influences what we do about ourselves, the role of education in controlling our thoughts and actions is more important now than ever before. For the last 500 years, the history of African people throughout the world has been told through the slavery experience - only a short period in our life, considering that we are the oldest of the world's peoples. - Dr. Carter G. Woodson
One of our great Elder historians and ancestor who recently made his transition, Dr. John Henrick Clarke instructs us that we need to look behind the slavery curtain in order to see what African people achieved as an independent people before slavery.
Dr. Clarke points out that, "Because this independence existed for thousands of years before Europe itself existed, we should examine the far-reaching power of the European created educational system over the minds of most of the world."
In this connection Dr. Clarke observes that, "Prior to the slave trade and European colonialism, which began in the fifteenth-century, most of the peoples of the world had a concept of God shaped by their own culture and their own understanding of spirituality. They generally saw God, or any deity, as a figure resembling themselves. The expanding presence of the European made them consider not only a new God but a new image of God as well."
Obviously this has caused great harm to African people and is at the core of the miseducation cycle we must break.


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Frederick Douglas' Independence Day Address
Frederick Douglas delivered a poignant and eloquent speech on July 5, 1852 in Rochester, New York.
Note especially the last two paragraphs
In which Douglas discusses the meaning of the Fourth of July to a slave.
"Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here today? What have those or I 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 this 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. You share the rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, 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 inhumane mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak today? If so, there is a parallel in your conduct. And let me warn you that it is a 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 today 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 from 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,
O Jerusalem let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth."

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"Fellow-citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, today, rendered more tolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorrow on 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 this 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 which serves to perpetuate slavery - the great sin and shame of America! "I will not equivocate; I will not excuse"; I will use the severest language I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery; and yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgement 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 your argue more, and 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 governments. 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 punishment of death; while only two of the same crimes will subject a white man to the like punishment. What is this but the acknowledgement that the slave is a moral, intellectual, and responsible being? The manhood of the slave is conceded. It is admitted in the fact that the Southern statute are covered with enactment's forbidding, under severe fines and penalties, the teaching of the slave to read or to write."

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"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 street, 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 the brute, then I will 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 were 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, 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 difficulty, involving a doubtful application of the principle of justice, hard to be understood? How should I look to-day, in the presence of Americans, 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 who 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 masters? Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood, stained with pollution, is wrong? No! I will not. I have better employment for my time and strength than such arguments would imply."

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"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 past.
At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! Had I the ability, and could I 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 of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; America 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 each African-American 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 despotism's 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, Amerikkka reigns without rival.
Amerikkka is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. The great sin and shame of Amerikkka!
"I will not equivocate; I will not excuse"; I will use the severest language I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate "White Supremacy - Racism" ; and yet not one word shall escape that any man, whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart a Racist, shall not confess to be right and just.


Excepted: From: Frederick Douglas on July 5, 1852, in Rochester, New York.
Carter G. Woodson (ed.) Negro Orators and Their Orations (Washington, 1925)