On Saturday, July 3, 28 readers at Exeter Town Hall performed 54 paragraphs of the famous speech What to the American Slave is Your Fourth of July? by Frederick Douglass, first read in Rochester, New York in 1852.
The message of Douglass s lengthy speech questions the celebration of Independence Day, when slaves in the United States were not free. Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us, Douglass told the crowd at the Corinthian Hall in Rochester on July 5, 1852. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The 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.”