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.”

Identify and write the claim Douglass makes.

Answer 1

Claim: Douglass argues that the Fourth of July is a hypocritical sham for the American slave — instead of celebrating liberty and equality, the holiday exposes the nation's gross injustice and cruelty toward enslaved Black people, making its boasts of freedom empty and mocking.