Question

What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? 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; 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.

—Frederick Douglass

Identify the claim in the passage.

Answer 1

The claim is that the Fourth of July is a sham for American slaves — it exposes the nation’s gross injustice and cruelty toward them and reveals the hypocrisy of celebrating “liberty” and “equality” while slavery continues.