Once again on the Fourth of July, a day set aside to commemorate the signing of the Declaration of Independence, my heart swells with a tumultuous mix of emotions.
F. Willis Johnson
I feel reverence for the lofty ideals enshrined in that sacred document, and I am profoundly gratitude for the freedoms we do enjoy. Yet sorrow and righteous indignation burn within me, too.
Like the great Frederick Douglass, my soul is torn by the stark contradiction between celebrating our nation’s birth and the painful reality that the promises of true liberty and justice remain unfulfilled for far too many of our fellow citizens.
In his iconic 1852 oration, Douglass posed a searing question that still haunts us today: “What, to the slave, is the Fourth of July?” His answer, a bitter indictment of our nation’s hypocrisy, still resonates: “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.”
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