As we commemorate the 4th of July this year, I invite us to make a connection between 1852 and 2025. One of the most powerful and challenging speeches in American history was given by Frederick Douglass to The Rochester Ladies Anti-Slavery Society on July 5, 1852. The speech is called “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” It was given when Frederick Douglass was a fugitive slave after escaping enslavement in Maryland the decade before. Over the holiday weekend, I hope you will look it up online and spend some time reflecting on it both historically and what it means for today.
For the purposes of this reflection, I want to lift up two themes of the speech that are especially meaningful to me during this tumultous year of 2025. The first is celebrating the founding principles of this nation. The second is honestly confronting ways in which we violate those principles in the current treatment of immigrants in general and asylum seekers in particular.
Even as a fugitive slave, Frederick Douglass celebrated the founding fathers and principles of our nation as exemplified in the following quotes:
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…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 defence. Mark them!
Along with Frederick Douglass, we can rightly celebrate the 4th of July and the principles articulated in The Declaration of Independence. Because of these founding principles, people from around the world continue to come to this nation seeking freedom and asylum from oppression and injustice.
Yet in 2025 as in 1852, it is essential to be honest about ways that we violate those principles in order to confront and address the resulting injustices. Much of Douglass’ speech is a masterful articulation of such clear and challenging confrontation. Here are just a couple of examples:
Whether we turn to the declarations of the 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 be false to the future.
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 proclaimed and denounced.
Frederick Douglass spoke these words in the context of race based chattel slavery in the United States of America. These words still resonate today in the context of the arrests, detentions, and deportations of thousands of immigrants and asylum seekers without due process. In another part of the speech which is too long to quote here, Douglass vividly described the horror and trauma of the slave market including the forced separation of families. Today we have many cell phone videos of people being snatched off the street by masked government agents. Posted below is just one tragic incident among many. Recently an Iranian couple seeking asylum was arrested and detained in this traumatic way. After her husband was handcuffed, his wife experienced a panic attack and was violently subdued, handcuffed, and arrested by masked ICE agents. The couple’s pastor was on the scene and video taped the horrific event. The couple are active members of their church and in no way represent the hardened criminals that the Trump administration told us would be the targets of detention and deportation. For those of us who are followers of Jesus, they are our brother and sister in Christ. The first video a report of a local news channel. The second video is the pastor’s raw video footage. Both are very sad and painful to watch. With that warning, I encourage you to watch either or both, and you will see that the words of Frederick Douglass written for the 4th of July in 1852 are tragically relevant to the 4th of July 2025. Yet when we are touched by such unjust human suffering, we are motivated to resist however we can.