FREDERICK Douglas was an African-American slave. Through sheer persistence Mr Douglas became a leader and anti-slavery activist. In 1852, he was asked to speak on America’s independence day. He asked the audience this rhetorical question: “What to the slave is 4th of July?” and continued to answer it eloquently. Here is his speech: “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. 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?

“What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is a 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 shout of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanks-givings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, inpiety, and hypocrisy – a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.

“There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.”

163 years later, the tyranny of the one per cent still reigns. Thus, it is the celebration day for the elite.

AXMED BAHJAD Fleet Street Swindon