Frederick Douglass & the 4th of July

Last evening the venal, self-aggrandizing excuse for an American president pulled a "reality TV" stunt, celebrating the 4th of July from Mt. Rushmore in South Dakota. Just about every aspect of this event was tone-deaf. The monument is on contested sacred land for the Lakota people and the carver had strong ties to the Ku Klux Klan. Two of the four presidents portrayed, Washington and Jefferson, owned a number of slaves (124 and 600+) and Jefferson fathered children with at least one of them. To ice the cake, guests at this shindig were not required to maintain physical distance and there was a "uge" fireworks display in the midst of tinder dry conditions.

Millions of Americans were appalled by this spectacle and lots of Christians denounced it and Trump's message for the race-bating mess it was.

At the same time many racialized leaders were calling for a more reflective recognition of what it means to be American by turning to the words of a former slave of the 19th century, the great orator Frederick Douglass. In one of his speeches, which were often sermons because he drew heavily on scripture and biblical imagery of freedom for all peoples, he notes that for White Americans Independence Day is akin to Passover a celebration of liberation. He eventually asked the question , "what to the slave is the 4th of July?' This question resounds in the present day when Indigenous peoples, Blacks, People of Colour are asking what equality means in the United States.

As Canadians of faith we can be in solidarity today with American brothers and sisters who will be offering an alternative to the disastrous direction a great nation is heading. Many of them will be engaged in prayer and we can pray with them.

Here is a paragraph from Douglass's speech made 168 years ago before a group of abolitionists, those working to end slavery:

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. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.

 

 

Six Grandfathers before Mt Rushmore carving commenced in 1927