Source identified
Read & copy the quotation
“This Fourth of July is yours, not mine.”
- Date
- 1852
Meaning of “This Fourth of July is yours, not mine.”
Douglass exposes the exclusion within a national celebration of liberty when enslaved people are denied the freedom and rights being publicly commemorated.
Where does it come from?
Frederick Douglass, Oration delivered in Corinthian Hall, Rochester, July 5, 1852, reviewed against the public-domain Wikisource transcription of the original oration. 'This Fourth July is yours, not mine' follows Douglass's contrast between the audience's national independence and the exclusion of enslaved Black Americans; it remains abolitionist indictment, not generic patriotism.
