On July 5, 1852 at Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York, Frederick Douglass gave a keynote address at an Independence Day celebration.
Douglass asked: “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”
The celebrated orator was the most photographed American in the 19th century.
For an African American in 2026, “[t]his Fourth of July is yours, not mine, You may rejoice, I must mourn.”
President Trump turned the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence into a circus, casting himself as the ringmaster. The circus sideshow includes cage fighters, an algae-plagued Reflecting Pool, and the not-so Great American State Fair.
In celebration of Frederick Douglass and the 5th of July, I will press on and “agitate, agitate, agitate.”
PHL Watchdog 