#RolandMartinUnfiltered - #RMU EXCLUSIVE: Activists, celebs, preachers read Frederick Douglass' Epic 4th of July speech

Episode Date: July 8, 2019

Roland Martin, Mark Thompson, Brittany Packnett, Bree Newsome, Kristen Clarke, Greg Carr, Tamika Mallory, Pastor Jamal Bryant, Aisha Danielle Moodie Mills, Danielle Moodie Mills, Samuel L. Jackson, Jelani Cobb, Phillip Agnew, Tiffany Loftin, Laz Alonso, Chuck D, Avis Jones DeWeever, Paulette Washington, Monique Pressley, Pastor Frederick Haynes, Rev. William Barber, Rev. Kenneth Whalum, Shireen Mitchell, and Erika Alexander read Frederick Douglass' epic July 4th speech, "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glott. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. Last year, a lot of the problems of the drug war. This year, a lot of the biggest names in music and sports. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man.

We met them at their homes. We met them at their recording studios. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

You say you never give in to a meltdown and never fill your feed with kid photos. You say you'd never put a pacifier in your mouth to clean it and never let them run wild through the grocery store. So when you say you'd never let them get into a car without you there, know it can happen. One in four hot car deaths happen when a kid gets into an unlocked car and can't get out. Never happens. Before you leave the car,

always stop, look, lock. Brought to you by NHTSA and the Ad Council. Hey folks, welcome to this special edition of Roland Martin Unfiltered. Today is July 4th, 2019. And it was 167 years ago when Frederick Douglass delivered his speech in Rochester, New York on July 5th, 1852. And the topic of this speech was what to the slave is the 4th of July. It is considered one of the greatest speeches of all time. And what we have decided to do is to do a literal reading of the entire speech. Now, I call some friends of mine to help me with this. Among them, Sam Jackson, Laz Alonzo, Reverend Frederick Douglas Haynes, Reverend William Barber and many others. And so over this couple of hours, you're actually going to hear all of us read this iconic speech from the great Frederick Douglass. All right. So let's go ahead and get things

started. Mr. President, friends and fellow citizens, he who could address this audience without a quailing sensation has stronger nerves than I have. I do not remember ever to have appeared as a speaker before any assembly more shrinkingly, nor with greater distrust of my ability that I do this day. The feeling has crept over me quite unfavorable to the exercise of my limited powers of speech. The task before me is one which requires much previous thought and study for its proper performance. I know that apologies of this sort are generally considered

flat and unmeaning. I trust, however, that mine would not be so considered. Should I seem at ease, my appearance would much misrepresent me. Little experience I have had in addressing public meetings in country school houses avails me nothing on the present occasion. The papers and placards say that I am to deliver a 4th of July oration. This certainly sounds large and out of the common way, for it is true that I have often had the privilege to speak in this beautiful hall and to address many who now honor me with their presence. But neither their familiar faces nor the perfect gauge i think i have of corinthian hall seems to free me from embarrassment the fact is ladies and gentlemen the distance between this platform and

the slave plantation from which i escaped is considerable and the difficulties to be overcome in getting from the latter to the former are by no means slight. That I am here today is to me a matter of astonishment as well as of gratitude. You will not, therefore, be surprised if in what I have to say I evince no elaborate preparation nor grace my speech with any high-sounding exordium. With little experience and with less learning, I have been able to throw my thoughts hastily and imperfectly together. And trusting to your patient and generous indulgence, I will proceed to lay them before you. This, for the purpose of this celebration, is the 4th of July. It is the birthday of your national

independence and of your political freedom. This to you is what the Passover was to the emancipated people of God. It carries your minds back to the day was to the emancipated people of God. It carries your minds back to the day and to the act of your great deliverance and to the signs and to the wonders associated with that act and that day. This celebration also marks the beginning of another year of your national life and reminds you that the Republic of America is now 76 years old. I am glad, fellow citizens, that your nation is so young. 76 years, though a good old age for a man is but a mere speck in the life of a nation. Three score years and ten is the allotted time for individual men, but nations number their years by thousands.

According to this fact, you are even now only in the beginning of your national career, still lingering in the period of childhood. I repeat, I am glad this is so. There is hope in the thought and hope is much needed under the dark clouds which lower above the horizon. The eye of the reformer is met with angry flashes, pretending disastrous times, but his heart may well beat lighter at the thought that America is young and that she is still in the impressible stage of her existence. May he not hope that high lessons of wisdom, of justice, and of truth will yet give direction to her destiny. Were the nation older, the patriot's heart might be sadder and the reformers brow heavier. Its future might be shrouded in gloom

and the hope of its profits go out in sorrow. There's consolation in the thought that America is young. Great streams are not easily turned from channels worn deep in the course of ages. They may sometimes rise in quiet and stately majesty and inundate the land, refreshing and fertilizing the earth with their mysterious properties. They may also rise in wrath and fury and bear away on their angry waves the accumulated wealth of years of toil and hardship. They, however, gradually flow back to the same old channel and flow on as serenely as ever. But while the river may not be turned aside, it may dry up and leave nothing behind but the withered branch and the unsightly rock to howl in the abyss-sweeping wind, the sad tale of departed glory, as with rivers so with nations.

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. The style and title of your sovereign people in which you non glory was not then born. You were under the British crown. Your father's esteemed the English government as the home government, and England as the fatherland. This home government, you know, although a considerable distance from your home, did in the exercise of its parental prerogatives impose upon its colonial children such restraints, burdens, and limitations as, in its mature judgment, it deemed wise, right, and proper.

But your fathers, who had not adopted the fashionable idea of this day of the infallibility of government and the absolute character of its acts, presumed to differ from the home government in respect to the wisdom and the justice of government unjust, unreasonable, and oppressive, and altogether such as ought not to be quietly submitted to, I scarcely need say, fellow citizens, that my opinion of those measures fully accords with that of your fathers. Such a declaration of agreement on my part would not be worth much to anybody. It would certainly prove nothing as to what part I might have taken had I lived during the great controversy of 1776. To say now that America was right and England wrong is exceedingly easy. Everybody can say it. The dastard, not less than a noble brave, can flippantly descant on the tyranny of England towards the American colonies. It is even fashionable to do so. But there was a time when to pronounce against England and in favor of the cause of the colonies, tried men's souls.

They who did so were accounted in their day, plotters of mischief, agitators and rebels, dangerous men to side with the right against the wrong, with the weak against the strong and with the oppressed against the oppressor. Here lies the merit, and the one which, of all others, seems unfashionable in our day. The cause of liberty may be stabbed by the men who glory in the deeds of your fathers. But to proceed, feeling themselves harshly and unjustly treated by the home government, your fathers, like men of honesty and men of spirit, earnestly sought redress. They petitioned and remonstrated. They did so in a decorous, respectful, and loyal manner. Their conduct was wholly unexceptional. This, however,

did not answer the purpose. They saw themselves treated with sovereign indifference, coldness, and scorn. Yet, they persevered. They were not the men to look back. As the sheet anchor takes a firmer hold when the ship is tossed by the storm, so did the cause of your fathers grow stronger as it breasted the chilling blasts of kingly displeasure. The greatest and best of British statesmen admitted its justice, and the loftiest eloquence of the British Senate came to its support. But with that blindness which seems to be the unwavering characteristic of tyrants, since Pharaoh and his hosts were drowned in the Red Sea, the British government persisted in the exactions complained of. The madness of this course we

believe is admitted now even by England, but we fear the lesson is wholly lost on our present ruler. Oppression makes a wise man mad. Your fathers were wise men, and if they did not go mad, they became restive under this treatment. They felt themselves the victims of grievous wrongs, wholly incurable in their colonial capacity. With brave men, there is always a remedy for oppression. Just here, the idea of a total separation of the colonies from the crown was born. It was a startling idea, much more so than we at this distance of time regarded. The timid and the prudent, as has been intimated, of that day were, of course, shocked and alarmed by it. Such people lived then, had lived before, and will probably ever have a place on this planet. And their course, in respect to any great change, no matter how great the good

to be attained or the wrong to be redressed by it, may be calculated with as much precision as can be the course of the stars. They hate all changes, but silver, gold, and copper change, of this sort of change, they are always strongly in favor. These people were called Tories in the days of your fathers, and the appellation probably conveyed the same idea that is meant by a more modern, though somewhat less euphonious term, which we often find in our papers applied to some of our old politicians. Their opposition to the then dangerous thought was earnest and powerful, but amid all their terror and affrighted vociferations against it,

the alarming and revolutionary idea moved on and the country with it. On the 2nd of July, 1776, the old Continental Congress, to the dismay of the lovers of ease and the worshipers of property, clothed that dreadful idea with all the authority of national sanction. They did so in the form of a resolution. And as we seldom hit upon resolutions drawn up in our day whose transparency is

at all equal to this, it may refresh your minds and help my story if I read it. Resolved, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is and ought to be dissolved. Citizens, your fathers made good that resolution. They succeeded and today you reap the fruits of their success. The freedom gained is yours and you, therefore, may properly celebrate this anniversary. The Fourth of July is the first great fact in your nation's history, the very ring bolt in the chain of your yet undeveloped destiny.

Pride and patriotism, not less than gratitude, prompt you to celebrate and to hold it in perpetual remembrance. I have said that the Declaration of Independence is the ring bolt to the chair of your nation's destiny, so indeed I regard it. The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles. Be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all all foes and at whatever cost. From the round top of your ship of state dark and threatening clouds may be seen. Heavy billows like mountains in the distance disclose to the leeward huge

forms of flinty rocks that bolt drawn that chain broken, and all is lost. Cling to this day, cling to it, and to its principles with the grasp of a storm-tossed mariner to a spar at midnight. The coming into being a nation in any circumstances is an interesting event, but besides general considerations, there were peculiar circumstances which make the advent of this republic an event of special attractiveness. The whole scene, as I look back to it, was simple, dignified, and sublime.

The population of the country at the time stood at the insignificant number of three million. The country was poor in the munitions of war. The population was weak and scattered and the country a wilderness unsubdued. There were then no means of concert and combination such as exists now. Neither steam nor lightning had been then reduced to order and discipline. From the Potomac to the Delaware was a journey of many days. Under these and innumerable other disadvantages, your fathers declared for liberty and independence and triumphed. Fellow citizens, I am not wanting in respect for the fathers of this republic. The silence of the Declaration of Independence were brave men. They were great men, too, great enough to give fame to a great age. It does not often

happen to a nation to raise at one time such a number of truly great men. The point from which I am compelled to view them is not certainly the most favorable. Yet I cannot contemplate their great deeds with less than admiration. They were statesmen, patriots and heroes. And for the good they did and the principles they contended for, I will unite with you to honor their memory. They love their country better than their own private interests. And though this is not the highest form of human excellence, all will concede that it is a rare virtue and that when it is exhibited, it ought to be command respect. He who will intelligently lay down his life for his country is a man whom it is not in human nature to despise.

Your father staked their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor on the cause of their country. In their admiration of liberty, they lost sight of all other interest. They were peacemen, but they preferred revolution to peaceful submission to bondage. They were quiet men, but they did not shrink from agitating against oppression. They showed forbearance,

but that they knew its limits. They believed in order, but not in the order of tyranny. With them, nothing was settled that was not right. With them, justice, liberty, and humanity were final, not slavery and oppression. You may well cherish the memory of such men. They were great in their day and generation. Their solid manhood stands out the more as we contrast it with these degenerate times. How circumspect, exact, and proportionate were all their movements. How unlike the politicians of an hour. Their statesmanship looked beyond the passing moment and stretched away in strength into the distant future. They seized upon eternal principles and set a glorious example in their defense. Mark them. Fully appreciating the hardship to be encountered, firmly believing in the right of their cause,

honorably inviting the scrutiny of an onlooking world, reverently appealing to heaven to attest their sincerity, soundly comprehending the solemn responsibility they were about to assume, wisely measuring the terrible odds against them, your fathers, the fathers of this republic, did, most deliberately, under the inspiration of a glorious patriotism and with a sublime faith in the great principles of justice and freedom, lay deep the cornerstone of the national superstructure which has risen and still rises in grandeur around you. Of this fundamental work, this day is the anniversary. Our eyes are met with demonstrations

of joyous enthusiasm. Banners and pennants wave exultingly on the breeze. The den of business, too, is hushed. Even Mammon seems to have quitted his grasp on this day. The ear-piercing fight and the steering drum unite their accents with the ascending peal of a thousand church bells. Prayers are made, hymns are sung, and sermons are preached in honor of this day. While the quick martial tramp of a great and multitudinous nation, echoed back by all the hills, valleys, and mountains of a vast continent bespeak the occasion, one of thrilling and universal interest, a nation's jubilee. Friends and citizens, I need not enter further into the causes which led to this anniversary. Many of you understand them better than I do. You can instruct me in regard to them. That is a branch of knowledge

in which you feel perhaps a much deeper interest than your speaker. The causes which led to the separation of the colonies from the British crown have never lacked for a tongue. They have all been taught in your common schools, narrated at your firesides, unfolded from your pulpits, and thundered from your legislative halls, and are as familiar to you as household words. They form the staple of your national poetry and eloquence. I remember also that as a people, Americans are remarkably familiar with all facts which make it in their own favor. This is esteemed by some as a national trait, perhaps a national weakness. It is a fact that whatever makes for the wealth or for the reputation of Americans and can be had cheap will be found by Americans. I shall not be charged with slandering Americans. If I say I think the American side or any question may be safely left in American hands, I leave. Therefore, the great deeds of your fathers to other gentlemen who claim to have been regularly descended will be less likely to be disputed than mine. My business, if I have any

here today, is with the present, the accepted time with God, and his cause is the ever-living now. Trust no future, however pleasant. Let the dead past bury its dead. Act, act in the living present heart within and God overhead. We have to do this with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and to the future. To all inspiring motives, to noble deeds, which can be gained from the past, we are welcome. But now is the time, the important time. Your fathers have lived, died, and have done their work and have done much of it well. You live and must die, and you must do your work. You have no right to enjoy your child's share in the labor of your fathers unless your children are to be blessed by your labors. You have no right to wear out and waste the hard-earned fame of your fathers to cover your indolence. Sidney Smith tells us that men seldom eulogize the wisdom and virtue of their fathers,

but to excuse some folly or wickedness of their own. The truth is not a doubtful one. There are illustrations of it near and remote, ancient and modern. It was fashionable. Hundreds of years ago, for the children of Jacob to boast, we have Abraham to our father, when they had long lost Abraham's faith and spirit. The people contented themselves under the shadow of Abraham's great name, while they repudiated the deeds which made his name great. Need I remind you that a similar thing is being done all over this country today? Need I tell you that the Jews are not the only people who built the tombs of the prophets and garnished the sepulchers of the righteous? Washington could not die till he had broken the chains of his slaves.

Yet his monument is built up by the price of human blood, and the traitors in the bodies and souls of men shout, we have Washington to our father. Alas, that it should be so. Yet so it is. The evil that men do lives after them. The good is oft interred with the evil that men do lives after them. The good is oft interred with their bones. 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 therefore called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?

Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions? Then would my task be light and my burden easy and delightful. For who is there so cold that a nation's sympathy could not warm him? Who's so obdurate and dead to the claims of gratitude that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? Who's so solid and selfish that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nation's jubilee when the chains of servitude had been torn from his limbs. I am not that man. In a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak, and the lame man leap as an art. But such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between

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 4th of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice. I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean citizens to mock me by asking me to speak today? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. And let me warn you that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation whose crimes lowering up to heaven were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying the nation in irrecoverable ruin.

I can today take up the plaintive lament of appealed and woe-smitten people. By the rivers of Babylon there we sat down. Yea, we wept when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof, For there, they that carried us away captive required of us a song, and they who wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How can we sing the Lord's song in a strange land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth. Fellow citizens, above your national tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions. Chains heavy and grievous yesterday are today rendered intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them.

If I forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, may my right hand forget her cunning and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth. To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with popular theme would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me reproach before God and the world. My subject, fellow citizens, is American slavery. I shall see this day and its popular characteristics from the slave's point of view. Standing there, identified with the American bondsman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare with all my soul that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on the 4th of July. Whether we turn to the declarations of past or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past,

false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to the false to the future. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave, on this occasion I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the Constitution and the Bible which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call into question and to denounce with all emphasis I can command everything that serves to perpetuate slavery, the great sin and shame of America, I will not equivocate, I will not excuse, I will use the severest language I can command, and yet not one word shall escape me that any man whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice or who is not at heart a slaveholder shall not confess to be right and just. But fancy I hear some one of my audience say it is just in this circumstance that you and your brother abolitionists fail to make the favorable impression on the public mind.

Would you argue more and denounce less? Would you persuade more and rebuke less? Your cause would be much more likely to succeed. But I submit, where all is plain, there is nothing to be argued. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light? Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That point is conceded already.

Nobody doubts it. The slaveholders themselves acknowledge it in their enactment of laws for their government. They acknowledge it when they punish the disobedience on the part of the slave. There are 72 crimes in the state of Virginia which, if committed by a black man, no matter how ignorant he be, subject him to the punishment of death, while only two of the same crimes will subject a white man to the like punishment. What is this but the acknowledgement that the slave is a moral and intellectual and responsible being? The manhood of the slave is conceited. It is admitted in the fact that southern statute books are covered with

enactments forbidding under severe fines and penalties the teaching of the slave to read and write. When you can point to any such laws in reference to the beasts of the field, then I may consent to argue the manhood of the slave. When the dogs in your streets, when the fowls in the air, when the cattle on your hills, when the fish of the sea and the reptiles that crawl shall be unable to distinguish the slave from a brute, then will I argue with you that the slave is a man. For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro. Is it not astonishing that while we are plowing and planting and reaping,

using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges and building ships, working in metals of brass and iron and copper and silver and gold, that while we are reading, writing and ciphering, acting as clerks, merchants and secretaries, having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators, and teachers, that while we are engaged in all manner of enterprise common to other men, digging gold in California, capturing the well in the Pacific, feeding ship and cattle on the hillside, living, moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives, and children, and above all, confessing and worshiping the Christian's God

and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave, we're called upon to prove that we're men. Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty, that he is a rightful owner of his own body? You've already declared it. Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? Is that a question for Republicans? Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and augmentation as a matter beset with great difficulty involving a doubtful application of the principle of justice dividing and subdividing a discourse to show that men have a natural right to freedom. Speaking of it relatively, positively, negatively, and affirmatively, to do so would make myself look ridiculous and offer an insult to your understanding. There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven that does not know that slavery is not for him. What? Am I to argue that it's wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant of their relations to other men, to beat them with sticks, to flay

their flesh with the lash, to load their limbs with irons, to hunt them with dogs, sell them at auction, to sunder their families, to knock out their teeth, to burn their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters. Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood and stained with pollution is wrong? No, I will not. I have better employments for my time and strength than such arguments would imply. What then remains to be argued is that that slavery is not divine, that God did not establish it, that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? There is blasphemy in the thought. That which is inhumane

cannot be divine. Who can reason on such a proposition? That they can. May I cannot. The time for such an argument is past. At a time like this, scorchering irony, not convincing argument, is needed. Oh, had I the ability and I 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 the 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 and the conscious of the nation must be aroused. The propriety of the nation must be startled and the hypocrisy of the nation must be aroused. The propriety of the nation. Must be startled.

And the hypocrisy of the nation. Must be exposed. And its crimes. Against God and human. Must be proclaimed and denounced. What. To the American slave. Is your 4th of July.

I answer. A day that reveals to him and her more than all the other days in the year. A gross injustice and cruelty to which he and she is the constant victim. To him and her, your celebration is a sham. You're boasting liberty, an unholy license. Your national greatness, a swelling vanity. Your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless and your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence, your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery, your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings with all of your religious parade, the solemnity are to him and her mere bombast, fraud, depiction, and hypocrisy.

A thin veil to cover up the crimes which should disgrace a nation on this earth more guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour. Go where you may. Search where you will. Roam through all the monarchies and deputisms of the old world. Travel through South America. Search out every abuse. And when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of everyday practices of this nation. And you will say with me that for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival. Take the American slave trade, which we are told by the papers is especially prosperous just now.

Ex-Senator Benton tells us that the price of men has never been higher than now. He mentions the fact to show that slavery is in no danger. This trade is one of the peculiarities of American institutions. It is carried out in all the large towns and cities in one half of this confederacy and millions are pocketed every year by dealers in this horrid traffic. In several states, this trade is a chief source of wealth. It is called, in contradistinction to the foreign slave trade, the internal slave trade. It is probably called so, too, in order to divert from its horror with which the foreign slave trade is contemplated. That trade has long since been denounced by this government as piracy. It has been denounced with burning words from the high places of the nation as an execrable traffic.

To rest it, to put an end to it, this nation keeps its squadron at immense cost on the coast of Africa. Everywhere in this country, it is safe to speak of this foreign slave trade as a most inhuman traffic opposed alike to the laws of God and of man. The duty to extirpate and destroy it is admitted even by our doctors of divinity. In order to put an end to it, some of these last have consented that their colored brethren nominally free should leave this country and establish themselves on the western coast of africa it is however a notable fact that while so many so much uh execration is poured out by americans upon those engaged in the foreign slave trade the men engaged in the slave trade between the states

passed without condemnation and their business is deemed honorable. Behold the practical operation of this internal slave trade, the American slave trade sustained by American politics and American religion. Here you will see men and women reared like swine for the market. You know what is a swine drover?

I will show you a man drover. They inhabit all of our southern states. They perambulate the country and crowd the highways of the nation with droves of human stock. You will see one of these human flesh jobbers armed with pistol, whip, and bowie knife driving a company of hundred men, women, and children from the Potomac to the slave market at New Orleans. These wretched people are to be sold singly or in lots to suit purchasers. They are food for the cotton field and the deadly sugar mill. Mark the sad procession as it moves warily along,

and the inhuman wretch who drives them. Hear his savage yells and his blood-chilling oaths as he hurries on to his affrighted captives. There, see the old man, with locks thinned and gray. Cast one glance, if you please, upon that young brother, whose shoulders are bare to the scorching sun, her briny tears falling on the brow of the babe in her arms. See, too, that girl of thirteen weeping, yes, weeping, as she thinks of her mother from whom she's been torn. The drove moves tardily. Heat and sorrow have nearly consumed their strength.

Suddenly you hear a quick snap, like the discharge of a rifle. The fetters clank, and the chain rattles simultaneously. Your ears are saluted with a scream that seems to have torn its way to the center of your soul. That crack you heard was the sound of a slave whip. The scream you heard was from the woman you saw with the babe. Her speed had faltered under the weight of her child and her chains. That gash on her shoulder tells her to move on. Follow the drove to New Orleans. Attend the auction. See men examined like horses. See the forms of women rudely and brutally exposed to the shocking gaze of American slave buyers. See this drove sold and separated forever. And never forget the deep sad sobs that arose from that scattered multitude.

Tell me, citizens, where, under the sun, you could witness a spectacle more fiendish and shocking? Yet, this is but a spectacle more fiendish and shocking. Yet, this is but a glance at the American slave trade as it exists at this moment in the ruling part of the United States. I was born amidst such sights and scenes. To me, the American slave trade was a terrible reality. When a child, my soul was often pierced with its horrors. I lived in Philpott Street, Fells Point, Baltimore, and have watched from the wharfs the slave ships in the basin, anchored from the shore with their cargos of human flesh, waiting for favorable winds to waft them down the Chesapeake. There was, at that time, a grand slave mark kept at the head of Pratt Street by Austin Wood Falk.

His agents were sent into every town and county in Maryland, announcing their arrival through the papers and on flaming head bills headed cash for Negroes. These men were generally well-dressed men and very captivating in their manners, every ready to drink, to treat, and to gamble. The fate of many a slave has depended upon the term of a single card, and many a child has been snatched from the arms of its mother by bargains arranged in a state of brutal drunkenness. The flesh mongers gather up their victims by the dozens and drive them chained to the General Depot at Baltimore.

When a sufficient number have been collected here, a ship is chartered for the purpose of night, for since the anti-slavery agitation, a certain caution is observed. In the deep, still darkness of midnight, I have been often aroused by the dead, heavy footsteps and the piteous cries of the chain gangs that passed our door. The anguish of my boyish heart was intense, and I was often consoled when speaking to my mistress in the morning to hear her say that the custom was very wicked and that she hated to hear the rattle of the chains and the heart-rendering cries. I was glad to find one who sympathized with me in my horror. Fellow citizens, this murderous traffic is today an active operation in this boasted republic. In the solitude of my spirit, I see clouds of dust raised on the highways of the South. I see the bleeding footsteps. I hear the doleful wail of fetter humanity on the way to the slave markets where the victims are to be sold like horses,

sheep, and swine, knocked off to the highest bidder. There I see the tenderest of tithes ruthlessly broken to gratify the lust, caprice, and reciprocity of the buyers and sellers of men. My soul sickens at the sight. Are these the graves that slumber in? But a still more inhuman, disgraceful, and scandalous state of things remains to be presented. By an act of the American Congress, not yet two years old, slavery has been nationalized in its most horrible and revolting form. By that act, Mason and Dixon's line has been obliterated. New York has become as Virginia, and the power to hold, hunt, and sell men and women and children as slaves remains no longer a mere state institution, but is now an institution of the whole United States. The power is coextensive with the Star-Spangled Banner and American Christianity.

Where these go may also go the merciless slave hunter. Where these are, man is not sacred. He is a bird for the sportsman's gun. By that most foul and fiendish of all human degrees, the liberty and person of every man are put in peril. Your broad republican domain is hunting ground for men, not for thieves and robbers, enemies of society merely, but for men guilty of no crime. Your lawmakers have commanded all good citizens to engage in this hellish sport your president your secretary of state our lords nobles and ecclesiastics enforced as a duty you owe to your free glorious country and to your god that you do this accursed thing not fewer than 40 americans have within the past two years been hunted down and without a moment's warning hurried away in chains and consigned to slavery in excruciating torture

some of these had wives and children dependent upon them for bread. But of this, no account was made. The right of a hunter to his prey stands superior to the right of marriage and to all rights in this republic, the rights of God included. For black men, there are neither law, justice, humanity, nor religion. The fugitive slave law makes mercy to them a crime and bribes the judge who tries them. An American judge gets $10 for every victim he consigns to slavery and five when he fails to do so. The oath of any two villains is sufficient under this hell-bent enactment to send the most pious and exemplary black man into the remorseless jaws of slavery.

His own testimony is nothing. He can bring no witnesses for himself. The minister of American justice is bound by the law to hear but one side, and that side is the side of the oppressor. Let this damning fact be perpetually told. Let it be thundered around the world that in tyrant killing, king hating, people loving, democratic Christian America, the seats of justice are filled with judges who hold their offices under an open and palpable bribe

and are bound in deciding in the case of a man's liberty. Hear only his accusers! In glaring violation of justice in shameless disregard of the forms of administering law, in cunning arrangement to entrap the defenseless, and in diabolical intent, this fugitive slave law stands alone in the annals of tyrannical legislation. I doubt if there would be another nation on the globe having the brass and the baseness to put such a law on the statute book.

If any man in this assembly thinks differently from me in this matter and feels able to disprove my statements, I will gladly confront him at any suitable time and place he may select. I take this law to be one of the grossest infringements of Christian liberty. If the churches and ministers of our country were not stupidly blind or most wickedly indifferent, they too would so regard it. They are utterly silent in respect to a law which robs religion of its chief significance and makes it utterly worthless to a world lying in wickedness. Did this law concern the mint, anise, and cumin, abridge the right to sing psalms, to partake of the sacrament, or to engage in any of the ceremonies of religion. It would be smitten by the thunder of a thousand pulpits. A general shout would go up from the church demanding repeal, repeal, instant repeal.

And it would go hard with that politician who presumed to solicit the votes of the people without inscribing this motto on his banner. Further, if this demand were not complied with, another Scotland would be added to the history of religious liberty. And the stern old covenanters would be thrown into the shade. A John Knox would be seen at every church door and heard from every pulpit. And Fillmore would have no more quarter than was shown by Knox to the beautiful but treacherous Queen Mary of Scotland. The fact that the church of our country, with fractional exceptions, does not esteem the fugitive slave law as a declaration of war against religious liberty implies that the church regards religion simply as a form of worship, an empty ceremony,

and not a vital principle requiring active benevolence, justice, love, and goodwill towards man. It esteems sacrifice above mercy, psalm singing above right doing, solemn meetings above practical righteousness, a worship that can be conducted by persons who refuse to give shelter to the houseless, to give bread to the hungry, clothing to the naked, and who enjoin obedience to a law forbidding these acts of mercy is a curse, not a blessing to mankind. The Bible addresses all such persons as scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites who pay tithe of mint and yeast and cumin and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith. But the church of this country is not only indifferent to the very lights of the church, have shamelessly given the sanction of religion and the Bible to the whole slave system. They have taught that man may properly be a slave, that the relation of master and slave

is ordained by God. That to send back an escaped boardman, bondman, to his master is clearly the duty of all the followers of the Lord Jesus Christ. And this horrible blasphemy is palmed off upon the world for Christianity. Welcome infidelity. Welcome atheism. Welcome anything in preference to the gospel is preached

by those divines. They convert the very name of religion into an engine of tyranny and barbarous cruelty and serve to confirm more infidels in this age than all the infidel writings of Thomas Paine Voltaire and Bolingbroke put together have done these ministers make religion a cold and flinty-hearted thing, having neither principles of right action nor bowels of compassion. They strip the love of God of its beauty and leave the throng of religion a huge, horrible, repulsive form. It is a religion for oppressors, tyrants, man-stealers, and thugs. It is not that pure and undefiled religion which is from above and which is first pure then peaceable, easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy,

but a religion which favors the rich against the poor, which exalts the proud above the humble, which divides mankind into two classes, tyrants and slaves, which says to the man in chains, stay there, and to the oppressor, oppress on. It is a religion which may be professed and enjoyed by all the robbers and enslavers of mankind. It makes God a respecter of persons, denies the fatherhood of the race, and tramples in the dust the great truth of the brotherhood of man. All this we affirm to be true of the popular church and the popular worship of our land and nation, a religion,

a church, and a worship which on the authority of inspired wisdom we pronounce to be an abomination in the sight of God. In the language of Isaiah, the American church might be well addressed. Bring no more vain ablations. Incense is an abomination unto me. The new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with. It is iniquity, even the solemn meeting. Your new moons and your appointed feast, my soul hateth. They are a trouble to me. I am weary to bear them. And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you. Yea, when you make many prayers, I will not hear. Your hands are full of blood.

Cease to do evil. Learn to do well. Seek judgment. Relieve the oppressed. Judge for the fatherless. Plead for the widow. The American church is guilty when viewed in connection with what it is doing to uphold slavery, but it is superlatively guilty when viewed in connection with its ability to abolish slavery, the sin of which it is guilty, is one of omission as well as commission. Albert Barnes but uttered what the common sense of every man at all,

observant of the actual state of the case, will receive as true. When he declared that there is no power out of the church that could sustain slavery and our if it were not sustained in it. Let the religious press, the pulpit, the Sunday school, the conference meeting, the great ecclesiastical missionary, Bible, and tract associations of the land array their immense powers against slavery and slaveholding, and the whole system of crime and blood would be scattered to the winds. And that they do not do this involves them in the most awful responsibility of which the mind can conceive. In prosecuting the anti-slavery enterprise, we have been asked to spare the church,

to spare the ministry. But how, we ask, could such a thing be done? We are met on the threshold of our efforts for the redemption of the slave by the church and ministry of the country. In battle arrayed against us and we are compelled to fight or flee from what quarter I beg to know has preceded a fire so deadly upon our ranks during the last two years as from the northern pulpit. As the champions of oppressors, the chosen men of American theology have appeared, men honored for their so-called piety and their real learning. The lords of Buffalo, the springs of New York, the Lathrops of Auburn, the Cox's and Spencer's of Brooklyn, the Gannetts and Sharps of Boston, the Dewey's of Washington, and other great religious lights of the land have in

utter denial of the authority of him by whom they profess to be called to the ministry, deliberately taught us against the example of the Hebrews and against the remonstrance of the apostles. They teach that we ought to obey man's law before the law of God. My spirit wearies of such blasphemy and how such men can be supported as the standing types and representatives of Jesus Christ. And I want folk to understand who listened to this. The audience he was speaking to was primarily white. White people who were part of the abolition movement whose spirits also wearied.

He said they called themselves representative of Jesus Christ. How they do that is a mystery which I leave others to penetrate. And speaking of the American church however let it be distinctly understood that I mean the great mass of religious organizations of our land. There are exceptions, and I thank God that there are. Noble men may be found scattered all over these northern states, of whom Henry Ward Beecher of Brooklyn and Samuel J. May of Syracuse and my esteemed friend the Reverend R.R. Raymond on the platform are shining examples. And let me say further that upon these men lies the duty to inspire our ranks with high religious faith and zeal

and to cheer us on in the great mission of the slave's redemption from his chains. But one is struck with the difference between the attitude of the American church toward the anti-slavery movement and that occupied by the churches in England toward a similar movement in that country. There, the church, true to its mission of ameliorating, alleviating, and improving the condition of mankind, came forward promptly, bound up the wounds of the West Indian slave and restored him to his liberty. There the question of emancipation was a high religious question.

It was demanded in the name of humanity and according to the laws of the living God. The Sharps, the Clarkstons, the Wilberforces, the Buxtons, the Birchels, the Nibs were alike, famous for their piety and their philanthropy. The anti-slavery movement there was not an anti-church movement for the reason that the church took its full share in prosecuting that movement and the anti-slavery movement in this country will cease to be an anti-church movement when the church of this country shall assume a favorable instead of a hostile position toward the movement.

Americans, he said, your Republican politics, not less than your Republican religion, are flagrantly, flagrantly inconsistent. You boast of your love of liberty, your superior civilization, and your pure Christianity, while the whole political power of the nation is solemnly pledged to support and perpetrate the enslavement of three millions of your countrymen. You hurl your anathemas at the crown-headed tyrants of Russia and Austria and pride yourselves in the democratic institution while you yourselves consent to be mere tools and bodyguards of the tyrants of Virginia and Carolina. You invite to your shores fugitives of oppression from abroad,

honor them with banquets, greet them with ovations, cheer them, toast them, salute them, protect them, and pour out your money to them like water. But the fugitives of your own land you advertise, hunt, arrest, shoot, and kill. You glory in your refinement and your universal education,

and yet you maintain a system as barbarous and dreadful as ever stained the character of a nation. You shed tears over fallen hungry and make the sad stories of her wrong the theme of your poets and statesmen and orators till your gallant sons are ready to fly to arms to vindicate her cause against her oppressors but in regard to the tens of thousands of wrongs of the American slave you would enforce the strictest silence. You're all on fire at the mention of liberty for France or Ireland but you're as cold as an iceberg

at the thought of liberty for the enslaved of America. You declare before the world and are understood by the world to declare that you hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain and a-level rights and that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And yet you hold securely in a bondage which, according to your own Thomas Jefferson, is worse than the ages of

that which your fathers rose in rebellion to oppose, a seventh part of the inhabitants of your country. Fellow citizens, I will not enlarge further on your national inconsistencies. The existence of slavery in this country brands your republicanism as a sham, your humanity as a base pretense, and your Christianity as a lie. It destroys your moral power abroad. It corrupts your politicians at home. It saps the foundation of religion. It makes your name a hissing and a byword to a mocking earth. It is the antagonistic force in your government, the only thing that seriously disturbs and endangers your union.

It fetters your progress. It is the enemy of improvement, the deadly foe of education. It fosters pride. It breeds insolence. It promotes vice. It is a curse to the earth that supports it. And yet you cling to it as if it were the sheep anchor of all your hopes. Oh, be warned. Be warned. A horrible reptile is coiled up in your nation's bosom.

The venomous creature is nursing at the tender breast of your youthful republic. For the love of God, tear away and fling from you this hideous monster, and let the weight of twenty millions crush and destroy it forever." But it is answered in reply to all this, that precisely what I have now denounced is in fact guaranteed and sanctioned by the Constitution of the United States. That the right to hold and to hunt slaves is a part of that Constitution framed by the illustrious fathers of this republic. Then, I dare to affirm, notwithstanding all I have said before, your father stooped, basely stooped to palter with us in a double sense and keep the word of promise to the ear, but break it to the heart.

And instead of being the honest men I have before declared them to be, they were the various imposters that ever practiced on mankind. This is the inevitable conclusion, and from it there is no escape. But I differ from those who charge this baseness on the framers of the Constitution of the United States. It is a slander upon their memory, at least so I believe. There is not time now to argue the constitutional question at length, nor have I the ability to discuss it as it ought to be discussed. The subject has been handled with masterly power by Lysander Spooner, Esquire, by William Goodell, by Samuel E. Sewell, Esquire, and last though not least, by Jarrett Smith, Esquire.

These gentlemen have, as I think, fully and clearly vindicated the Constitution from any design to support slavery for an hour. Fellow citizens, there is no matter in respect to which the people of the North have allowed themselves to be so ruinously imposed upon as that of the pro-slavery character of the Constitution. In that instrument, I hold there is neither warrant, license nor sanction of the hateful thing but interpreted as gateway or is it that is it in

the temple it is neither well i do not intend to argue this question on the present occasion. Let me ask, if it be not somewhat singular that if the Constitution were intended to be, by its framers and adopters, a slave-holding instrument, why neither slavery, slave-holding, nor slave can it ought to be interpreted the Constitution is a glorious Liberty document read its preamble consider its purposes is slavery among them we're asking is it at that is it at the anywhere be found in it? What would be thought of an instrument drawn up, legally drawn up, for the purpose of entitling the city of Rochester to a tract of land in which no mention of land was made. Now, there are certain rules of interpretation for the proper understanding of all legal instruments. These rules are well established.

They are plain common sense rules such as you and I and all of us can understand and apply without having passed years in the study of law. I scout the idea that the question of the constitutionality or unconstitutionality of slavery is not a question for the people. I hold that every American citizen has the right to form an opinion of the Constitution and to propagate that opinion and to use all honorable means to make his opinion the prevailing one. Without this right, the liberty of an American citizen would be as insecure as that of a Frenchman. Ex-Vice President Dallas tells us

that the Constitution is an object to which no American mind can be too attentive and no American heart too devoted. He further says the Constitution, in its words, is plain and intelligible and is meant for the home-bred, unsophisticated understandings of our fellow citizens. Senator Berrien tells us that the Constitution is the fundamental law that which controls all others, the charter of our liberties, which every citizen has a personal interest in understanding thoroughly. The testimony of Senator Breeze,

Louis Coz, and many others that might be named, who are everywhere esteemed as sound lawyers, so regard the Constitution. I take it, therefore, that it is not presumption in a private citizen to form an opinion of that instrument. Now take the constitution according to its plain reading and I defy the presentation of a single pro-slavery clause in it. On the other hand, it will be found to contain principles and purposes entirely hostile to the existence of slavery. I have detained my audience entirely too long already. At some future period, I will gladly avail myself of an opportunity to give this subject a full and fair discussion.

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. There are forces in operation which must inevitably work the downfall of slavery. The arm of the Lord is not shortened and the doom of slavery is certain. I, therefore, leave off where I began with hope while drawing encouragement from a declaration of independence, the great principles it contains and the genius of American institutions. My spirit is also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age.

Nations do not now stand in the same relation to each other as they did ages ago. No nation can now shut itself up from the surrounding world and trot round in the same old path of its fathers without interference. The time was when such could be done. Long-established customs of hurtful character could formally fence themselves in and do their evil work with social impunity. Knowledge was then confined and enjoyed by the privileged few, and the multitude walked on in mental darkness. But a change has now come over the affairs of mankind.

Walled cities and empires have become unfashionable. The arm of commerce has borne away the gates of the strong city. Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners of the globe. It makes its pathway over and under the sea as well as on the earth. Wind, steam and lightning are its chartered agents. Oceans no longer divide, but link nations together. From Boston to London is now a holiday excursion. Space is comparatively annihilated.

Thoughts expressed on one side of the Atlantic are distinctly hurt on the other. The far off and almost fabulous Pacific rose in grandeur at our feet. The celestial empire, the mystery of ages is being saw. The fiat of the almighty, let there be light, has not yet spent its force. No abuse, no outrage, whether in taste, sport, or average, can now hide itself from the all-pervading light. The iron shoe and crippled foot of China

must be seen in contrast with nature. Africa must rise and put on her yet unwoven garment. Ethiopia shall stretch out her hand unto God and the fervent aspirations of William Lord Garrison, I say, and let every heart join in saying it. Godspeed the year of Jubilee, the wide world o'er, when from their galling chains set free,

the oppressed shall vilely bend the knee and wear the yoke of tyranny like brutes no more. That year will come and freedom's reign to man his plundered fights again restore. God speed the day when human blood shall cease to flow and every climate be understood, the claims of human brotherhood And each return for evil good not blow for blow That day will come all feuds to end

And change into a faithful friend each foe God speed the hour the glorious hour When none on earth shall exercise a lordly power Nor in a tyrant's presence cower but to all manhood's stature tower by equal birth that hour will come to each to all and from his prison house the thrall go forth until that year day hour arrive with head and heart and hand i'll strive to break the rod and rend the guy the spice the spoiler of his prey deprived so witness heaven and never from my chosen post whatever the peril or the cost be driven

that folks was the speech Frederick Douglass delivered in Rochester, New York, on July 5th, 1852, talking about what does the Fourth of July mean to the slave. We wanted you to hear all of that because it puts in the proper context not only the state of America in 1852, but the state of America in 2019. So while others go with Trump in front of the Lincoln Memorial and he gives his speech and throws his party and the tanks are there and fireworks go off. Let us remind him. Let's remind Republicans, remind Democrats, remind America, remind Fox News and CNN and MSNBC and ABC and NBC and CBS.

Remind Wall Street to Main Street to M.O.K. Street. K Street remind this nation that it is not a perfect union. That it still has not fully granted freedom to the former slaves. The ancestors of those who were enslaved.

Those who built this country. We certainly hope you enjoyed this presentation of Frederick Douglass' speech. Be sure to support Roland Martin Unfiltered by going to RolandMartinUnfiltered.com and support our Bring the Funk Fan Club. Every dollar you give goes to support this show, to make this happen.

Nobody else would do something like this on this day. And that's why having this show, black-owned, black-controlled, controlling our narrative, is so important. I'm Roland Martin. Have a great day. Holla! I know a lot of cops. They get asked

all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or

wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. Last year, a lot of the problems of the drug war. This year, a lot of the biggest names in music and sports. This kind of starts that a little bit, man.

We met them at their homes. We met them at their recording studios. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

You say you'd never give in to a meltdown. Never let kids' toys take over the house. And never fill your feed with kid photos. You'd never plan your life around their schedule. Never lick your thumb to clean their face. And you'd never let them leave the house looking like less than their best. You'd say you'd never put a pacifier in your mouth to clean it. Never let them stay up too late.

And never let them run wild through the grocery store. So when you say you'd never let them get into a car without you there, know it can happen. One in four hot car deaths happen when a kid gets into an unlocked car and can't get out.

Never happens. Before you leave the car, always stop, look, This is an iHeart Podcast.