David Harris Jr Make America Great Again Hat

Photograph via the Harvard Gazette David Harris, managing managing director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Establish for Race & Justice at Harvard Police School

In an Independence 24-hour interval address in 1852, abolitionist movement leader Frederick Douglass famously asked a gathering in Rochester, New York "What to the slave is the 4th of July?" Answering his own question, it is a 24-hour interval, he said, "that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim." Douglass' speech communication laid bare the hypocrisy of American ideals of freedom at a fourth dimension when millions were living in Constitutionally-sanctioned bondage across the United States.

On July 2nd, people from across Massachusetts volition gather at apex on Boston Common near the State Business firm for the 11th annual public reading of Douglass's historic address. Harvard Law Today recently interviewed David Harris, managing director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race & Justice at Harvard Law School, the event'southward cosponsor, about the public reading and the continued relevance of Douglass' words.

Harvard Constabulary Today: Tin can you tell me a little bit about Douglass' speech? What did he say and in what context?

David Harris: Douglass was known for his oratory and this voice communication is no exception. It is actually quite long—nosotros use an abridged version for our readings—simply despite its length information technology is at once riveting and concise. As with whatsoever not bad oration, Douglass builds to his point, which is to distinguish between the spirit of commemoration typically surrounding the holiday and the misery suffered by enslaved people on that day and every day.  He begins by praising the young nation and its origins in righteous protest confronting oppression past a tyrannical monarch. "It is," he declares, "the birthday of your National Independence, and of your political freedom."

In doing so he sets the stage to distinguish the holiday for his audience and establishes the gulf between those in his audience and those who remain in chains. "My subject, then fellow citizens," says Douglass, "is American slavery." He brings that discipline to life in vivid and sometimes horrifying terms, "Standing," as he says, "with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion." The result is undeniable and its implications inescapable: the contradiction between the celebration and the bondage it masks demands activity.

Douglass made the speech well-nigh a decade before the American Civil War, a conflict that ultimately led to the adoption of the 13th amendment, which ended slavery. Why is this speech nevertheless relevant today?

Well, we have all come to understand that while on its face this amendment appeared to outlaw forever slavery and involuntary servitude, its exception for those serving "a punishment for law-breaking" left open the door for what Douglas Blackmon has called Slavery past Some other Name and Ana DuVernay's and so painfully rendered picture show, "13th", revealed every bit continued oppression in the 21st century. Douglass's searing power to cut through the rhetoric of freedom and republic lives on in works like these that reveal the indelible cruelty of the exemption every bit it continues to haunt our flawed legal and punishment systems.

Indeed, in 1 of the nearly timeless passages in the spoken communication, Douglass insists that the "character and carry of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this quaternary of July," adding as if speaking today, "Whether we plough 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, faux to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future."

So, all these years later, our massive organisation of incarceration echoes Douglass's charge that, "At that place is non a nation on the globe guilty of practices, more than shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hr." This is not to say at that place are not tyrannical regimes elsewhere in the earth or that other nations practice non abuse human rights, but it is the self-righteousness of our celebration in the midst of ongoing injustice that continues to resonate today.

We may finally exist thinking about creating a committee to written report the possibility of reparations—as with "all deliberate speed," the American manner of tackling a problem takes then much time and patience—and for this we can be thankful. Nosotros would be well advised to ponder Douglass's speech equally we frame this conversation. Indeed, his voice communication, which warns that "Your republican politics, not less than your republican religion, are flagrantly inconsistent," should exist required reading for any such commission.

Has the public reading of the speech communication each year on Boston Common—or the experience or pregnant of information technology—changed over the years?

As I mentioned earlier, the first reading was designed to the think near race in the "Age of Obama." I remember that get-go year, looking out at the crowd I was filled with the kind of hope Douglass expressed at the cease of his speech. I call up seeing a group of young blonde-haired children standing at the wall overlooking the reading as a group of belatedly adolescents and immature men sabbatum on the next steps on a lunch break from their piece of work with YouthBuild. Neither group had any idea what would exist going on when they happened by and I was truly heartened that both groups seemed to be intrigued and listening closely. It gave me such a surge of hope that the upshot could bring together such divergent groups. And that is one of the truly special elements, the combination of a core group of readers and the accidental attendees who happen past and hear $.25 and pieces of this incredible speech.

It seems that every year we take marked some anniversary with the reading, whether civil rights movement or Civil State of war related. This year we mark both the 400th ceremony of the arrival of captive Africans to the British colonies and the 65th ceremony of Dark-brown 5. Lath of Education. I have been thinking a lot about these ii and have discovered that information technology is too the 400th anniversary of the outset instance of representative regime in Jamestown. That assembly, which represented property-owning men, took place on July 30, 1619. Nosotros have a precise date for that first, momentous vote, which set the blueprint of exclusion with which we nevertheless alive, but no such precision marks the inflow of 50 captive Africans sometime in Baronial, 1619.

Understanding contradictions such as this is critical for honest conversation. For example, acknowledging all of the darker sides of our history makes information technology easier to empathise why and how Colin Kaepernick taking a knee during the national canticle is really an expression of the same kind of patriotism Douglass demonstrates in his critique of the United States. Both critiques seek true fidelity to those principles we fail to keep. Obviously, the speech has taken a much darker pregnant in the Age of [President Donald] Trump. We feel the pain and ache ever more than severely and it is much harder to find promise for the future. Just for me, the hope is in the very fact of gathering, of reading the speech in customs, renewing the bonds with others who share a decision to change, and committing to act appropriately.

Do yous think Douglass would be surprised to acquire that Americans are reciting his words near 170 years later?

That'due south a tough one for me. I by and large effort to avert speculating about electric current or historical figures I don't know. I don't know what kind of person he was or how he thought of himself. Based on what I know of his writings, even so, I think he would take very mixed feelings about the progress we take fabricated. I think he would look at the ongoing gulf betwixt our ideals and reality and might refer back to some of his own analysis to understand the current contradictions. This is a particularly difficult time for any such render, given the lack of civility and acceptance of intolerance that characterize our public discourse starting with the president.

Although primarily remembered for pointing out the hypocrisy of Independence Day in a nation that condoned the enslavement of millions of people, the speech also includes an interesting passage on the bear upon of globalization. Do you think that section has any lessons for the states today?

Funny you lot should enquire. Somehow I often find myself reading this paragraph and I'm always struck by its prescience. Noting the rapid changes in transportation and communication he insists that "Space is insufficiently annihilated. Thoughts expressed on one side of the Atlantic are, distinctly heard on the other."

What an agreement of the future this shows, although we know it is not all for the better. That anything of space has immune for "existent time" reporting of events, which in turn has led to considerable alter around the globe. He follows this observation by closing with words from William Lloyd Garrison, suggesting the new reach of the great abolitionist across the ocean as function of a global abolition movement.

I doubt even Douglass could have anticipated the technology we have or its uses. Our ability to communicate has led to much greater organizing and mobilization. Although it has also facilitated the spread of hateful ideas and untruths, I suspect Douglass, who understood perhaps better than anyone in the 19th century the ability of images, would have reveled in our power to capture and convey video of events. This ability fuels modern abolitionism movements, whether of human trafficking, prison or constabulary.

Can you tell me near the origins of the Reading Frederick Douglas Together project?

This project began in the library of an system chosen Community Change, which was founded by Horace Seldon in 1968 to address the "white problem" at the root of American inequality revealed past the Kerner Study. The written report is remembered for its conclusion that: "Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white—divide and diff."

In the early 2000s Community Change started a tradition of reading the Douglass spoken language in its library. A small grouping would gather in a circle and take turns reading paragraphs from the speech. I attended in 2008 and was securely moved by the feel.

It occurred to me that it would exist of involvement to many others if they knew about it. Paul Marcus, then the managing director of Community Change, and I contacted another colleague, David Tebaldi, then executive director of the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities (now MassHumanities) about sponsoring a public reading. We convened a group of interested parties, met a few times over a couple of months, and decided to launch an event on the Common.

My original thought was a public reading prior to the holiday, which would prompt people to incorporate the speech or a word of its meaning in their holiday observations, whether in the back m or the local library. That first twelvemonth, 2009, was also President Obama's first year in part. We were all giddy with the reality of a black president who had been willing to talk about race during the campaign. I said then and throughout his presidency that rather than freeing us from talking most race, his ballot freed us to talk nearly it; and we entitled that commencement event: "Reading Frederick Douglass in the Historic period of Obama."

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The Boston communal reading of "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" volition take identify on Tuesday, July 2 at noon on the Boston Common at the Country House, Shaw-MA 54th Memorial. Members of the public will take turns reading parts of the speech communication until they've read all of it, together. Everyone is welcome to read; this event is free and open to the public.

The issue is co-convened past the Charles Hamilton Houston Plant for Race & Justice at Harvard Police force School, Community Change, Inc., the Museum of African American History (Boston and Nantucket), and MassHumanities.

For more than data on this event visit CharlesHamiltonHouston.org.

For more data on other communal readings scheduled throughout the state, visit MassHumanities.org.

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Source: https://today.law.harvard.edu/frederick-douglass-fourth-of-july-speech-then-and-now-a-qa-with-david-harris/

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