Denson 1 Joshua Denson @02710326 Ms.

Atkins ENG 002-07 4 December, 2013 No Celebration for the Negro Nation The Fourth of July is viewed as a day of celebration and love for our country. Every year we as Americans come together, shoot fireworks, and enjoy each others company in the thought that 237 years ago America was freed from English control. However, America was not totally free. Blacks were still enslaved by their white counterparts for 86 more years. So should the holiday be referred to Independence Day*, with an asterisk? Negros were not free. So what exactly does the Fourth of July mean to Blacks? Frederick Douglass stated that the 4th of July is, 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 (Douglass 376). I believe that Frederick Douglass was correct in saying that The Fourth of July is not a celebration to African Americans, but actually a torment. It is no celebration to the Black community and it is disrespectful for it to be taught as such in school. The Fourth of July holds no meaning to the Black American. Independence by definition is freedom from outside control or support: the state of being independent. By July 4th being the nations independence day, it is implying that everyone was free. This was obviously not the case. Blacks were still tortured for almost 100 more years after this. This holidays name is a bold lie. Blacks everywhere are encouraged to celebrate this mockery to blacks, with the apparent truth always being swiftly overlooked. Slavery is always the elephant in the room when Independence Day is celebrated.

Denson 2 Frederick Douglass went on to speak on the fact America is very hypocritical. Douglass highlights the American slave-trade. America denounced foreign slave trade. America put on a faade that it was just a horrendous act and that the wrath of the Nation on whoever participates in it. America put on this mask of being always doing right, but then had internal slave-trade. They not only still had internal slave-trade, but the encouraged and honored it. Blacks were still treated as property and worked to death for years after the Declaration of Independence due to this same internal slave-trade. So why should Blacks celebrate this day that was not meant for them? According to The Fourth of July and Black Americans in the Nineteenth Century: Northern Leadership Opinion Within the Context of the Black Experience of the Journal of Negro History, for years Blacks have produced other ways to protest or celebrate the Fourth of July. Others [blacks] boycotted the day, preferring to honor days which warranted sincere black celebration such as January 1, a day first celebrated in 1808 when foreign slave trade was abolished and later reaffirmed as a day of celebration occasioned by Lincolns Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. Perhaps the most popular northern alternative to July 4 after 1834 was August 1, West Indian Emancipation Day. Another Afro-American tradition deferred celebrating July 4 until July 5, when blacks could symbolically express their alienation from the promises of July 4 and when they could safely congregate without hazarding the drunken wrath of Fourth Of July white mobs. Whatever shape of the celebrations, the Fourth of July expressed itself to black Americans in terms opposite to what it was intended to express (The Journal of Negro History 259). For years Blacks have took offense to the holiday and worked their way around celebrating the holiday.

Denson 3 Fredrick Douglasss claim that The Fourth of July has no worth to the Black American does have a flaw though. It can be said that the Fourth of July is a celebration of the actual countrys independence of outside control, rather than the individual independence of the citizens. In June 1776, representatives of the 13 colonies then fighting in the revolutionary struggle weighed a resolution that would declare their independence from Great Britain (A&E Television Networks, LLC). This would mean that The Fourth of July would be relevant to every American citizen, regardless of their ethnicity. If one would take this stand, then