Watch: Frederick Douglass Delivered History's Most Powerful 4th of July Speech - James Earl Jones Declaimed It.
As a bitterly divided U.S. marks its 250th anniversary, the great abolitionist's fierce critique of a nation's failure to fulfill its stated ideals and values rings true today.
On Saturday, the United States marks its semiquincentennial, awash in the vile corruption, vicious cruelty and tyrannical incompetence of Donald Trump — disunited by an elected leader who foments, division, preaches hatred, and steals like he breathes.
At a time of disillusion and pessimism about the nation’s future, Newsmakers sought solace and affirmation of the historic ideals, principles and values on which the U.S. was founded in the words of perhaps the most famous speech ever delivered in observation of America’s birthday.
On July 5, 1852, abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass, himself a formerly enslaved man, delivered a searing address in Rochester, N.Y., that made manifest the vast gap between the soaring rhetoric of the Founders and the brutality of the institutional bondage they had legalized.
Here’s an excerpt from the speech, courtesy of Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now, as delivered by the late James Earl Jones — one that speaks to the obligation of Americans to respond when the nation’s founding principles are betrayed. The full text of Douglass’s speech is here.
Image: Frederick Douglass (Amsterdam News).