Douglass speech rings true today

What to you is the Fourth of July? The mere mention of it brings forth fond memories of fireworks, barbecue, potato salad and my dad's passing down to me the solemn duty of hand-cranking mom's homemade ice cream. Priceless.

But President Donald Trump has reminded me of another side to the Fourth. It occurred earlier this year when he seemed to many ears to be raising Frederick Douglass from the dead.

While praising the new National Museum of African American History and Culture in a meeting with black professionals, the president mentioned, "Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody who's done an amazing job and is getting recognized more and more, I notice."

Whether or not the president really thought Douglass, who died in 1895, was still around or not, I was pleased to hear the shout-out. Douglass is one of my favorite role models.

[Recall those denied their share of the Fourth]

He escaped slavery, read voraciously and became the nation's most influential African-American abolitionist, orator, journalist, social reformer and statesman in the 19th century.

His often-quoted Fourth of July speech (actually delivered on July 5, 1852) to the women of the Rochester Anti-Slavery Sewing Society offers a bracing counterpoint to the unbridled flag-waving in most Independence Day speeches.

Less than a decade before the Civil War that was approaching like an oncoming train, Douglass described in sobering detail the horrors endured by a class of Americans for whom liberty was still only a dream.

"What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July?" Douglass asks. "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," he continued; "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 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 the United States, at this very hour."

[A lesson in black history]

Yet, after that fiery repudiation of what many called "the peculiar institution," Douglass ended on a purposefully upbeat tone. "Notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented, of the state of the nation," he said. "I do not despair of this country."

Instead, Douglass said he saw "forces in operation which must inevitably work the downfall of slavery."

"The fiat of the Almighty, 'Let there be Light,' has not yet spent its force," he said. "No abuse, no outrage, whether in taste, sport or avarice, can now hide itself from the all-pervading light."

Some people read Douglass' words and hear only his anger. As an aspiring black student journalist, I heard his relentless optimism. If a self-educated, former slave could make it in mainstream America, his words told me, so could I.

Douglass hated America's tolerance for slavery but he appreciated its potential for improvement. That's why he urged President Abraham Lincoln and others to reject the "recolonization" movement that pushed to deport slaves back to Africa. Black Americans fought and worked hard for this country too, Douglass insisted, and they were not about to give up on it.

Douglass died at age 78 of a heart attack after attending a convention for women's suffrage with his friend Susan B. Anthony. When a young black man asked him for career advice, Douglass answered, "Agitate, agitate, agitate."

That's America's promise. Sometimes it takes extra work to help America keep that promise. Even in today's more enlightened post-Obama America, Douglass still would find a lot to agitate about.

People who say we are "more divided than ever" have short memories. Divisions are to be expected in a diverse society. We are a great nation that still seeks the "more perfect union" called for in the Constitution. Douglass' memory reminds us of the work that remains to be done.

I don't know whether he really is being "recognized more and more," as President Trump suggests, but he should be.

Clarence Page is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune. Email, cpage@chicagotribune.com.

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