On July 5, 1852, over a decade before Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, Frederick Douglass delivered a keynote address at an Independence Day event. “What, to the American slave, is the Fourth of July?” Douglass asked. “A day thatreveals 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 shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery.”