Quote
By Frederick Douglass
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 July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.
- Source
- Oration, Delivered in Corinthian Hall, Rochester (What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?), 1852 · Oration delivered in Corinthian Hall, Rochester, 1852, p. 15
- Read at
- Internet Archive (scan of the 1852 Rochester pamphlet, Lee, Mann & Co.)
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About this quote
From Douglass's oration at Corinthian Hall, Rochester, New York, on July 5, 1852, as printed in the 1852 pamphlet.