Do I look there? Or look there?
OK.
My name is Alexa Anne Watson
and I am the great great great granddaughter of–
Frederick Douglass is my great great great great–
I am the great great great granddaughter
of Frederick Douglass.
I am the great great great great grandchild–
I've been counting on my fingers since I was five.
This is the 4th of July.
It is the birthday of your National Independence,
and of your political freedom.
Fellow-citizens, I shall not presume to dwell at length
on the associations that cluster about this day.
The simple story of it is that, 76 years ago,
the people of this country were British subjects.
Oppression makes a wise man mad.
Your fathers were wise men, and if they did not go mad,
they became restive under this treatment.
With brave men there is always a remedy for oppression.
They succeeded; and to-day you reap the fruits
of their success.
The freedom gained is yours; and you,
therefore, may properly celebrate this anniversary.
Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask,
why am I called upon to speak here today?
What have I, or those I represent, to do
with your national independence?
Are the great principles of political freedom
and of natural justice, embodied in that
Declaration of Independence, extended to us?
I am not included within the pale
of this glorious anniversary!
Your high independence only reveals
the immeasurable distance between us.
The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice,
are not enjoyed in common.
The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity
and independence, bequeathed by your fathers,
is shared by you, not by me.
The sunlight that brought life and healing to you,
has brought stripes and death to me.
This Fourth of July is yours, not mine.
You may rejoice, I must mourn.
Fellow-citizens; above your national,
tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions!
At a time like this, scorching irony,
not convincing argument, is needed.
O! had I the ability,
and could reach the nation’s ear,
I would, today, pour out a fiery stream
of biting ridicule, blasting reproach,
withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke.
For it is not light that is needed, but fire;
it is not the gentle shower, but thunder.
We need the storm, the whirlwind,
and the earthquake.
The feeling of the nation must be quickened;
the conscience of the nation must be roused;
the propriety of the nation must be startled;
the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed;
and its crimes against God and man must be
must be proclaimed and denounced.
What, to the American slave, is your 4th 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 denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence;
your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery;
your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings,
with all your religious parade, and solemnity,
are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception,
impiety, and hypocrisy—
There is not a nation on the earth guilty
of practices, more shocking and bloody,
than are the people of these United States,
at this very hour.
Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding
the dark picture I have this day presented
of the state of the nation,
I do not despair of this country.
This speech was written almost 170 years ago, but
I mean, this part of it is still extremely relevant,
especially with today's protests.
I think that when people are oppressed,
they feel silenced.
And if someone feels silenced,
they get angry.
There are certain tactics that you need to use to get
people to really hear your voice
and it's not always gonna be a calm discussion.
I think he's mostly talking to the people who are already
on his side but believe that they can still
try to talk this out or that things are still justifiable.
I know a lot of people at the time were saying,
and people now are still saying that
it's not as bad as it could be.
While the 4th of July probably does not feel
the same to me as it does to others,
I wouldn't say that it has no meaning,
because it is the time when America, the country,
became free from another country.
But I would say it's not the time in which I gained
my freedom.
He had a lot of hope,
especially for his age.
And I'm getting to the point in my life where
I'm only 20 years old but I'm exhausted.
Like I have these thoughts like,
"Will we ever really get to this point?"
or "Is this really something that we should
actually spend our time fighting for?"
Someone once said that pessimism
is a tool of white oppression.
And I think that's true. I think in many ways,
we are still slaves to the notion that
it will never get better.
But I think that there is hope,
and I think that it's important that we celebrate
Black joy and Black life,
and we remember that change is possible,
change is probable,
and that there's hope.