Voit lisätä twiitteihisi sijainnin, esimerkiksi kaupungin tai tarkemman paikan, verkosta ja kolmannen osapuolen sovellusten kautta. Halutessasi voit poistaa twiittisi sijaintihistorian myöhemmin. Lue lisää
Some Fourth of July Black history: A thread.
On July 4, 1831 Williams Watkin, writing as "A Colored Baltimorean" wrote a lamentation on the meaning of Independence Day in The Genius of Emancipation, an abolitionist paper published in Baltimore. His words began:pic.twitter.com/x8cVRvDNh3
The theme of hypocrisy found in Watkin's lamentation can also be seen in Frederick Douglass' famous speech "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" That speech was delivered on July 5, 1852 to the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society in Rochester, New York. Some excerpts:
"What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" "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?"
"Fellow citizens; above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, today, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them." Full speech: https://rbscp.lib.rochester.edu/2945
After the Civil War, many Black Americans used Independence Day as an opportunity to celebrate the freedom they had fought for and won. As a result, Black July 4 celebrations became a target for white supremacist violence. Here's one example from Vicksburg, MS in 1875.pic.twitter.com/bglmC4vKSk
On July 8, 1876, a white militia led by future governor and U.S. Senator Ben Tillman massacred Black people in the town of Hamburg, South Carolina. The stated purpose for the massacre was white anger over a Black-led Fourth of July parade that had taken place in the city.
The Hamburg Massacre was part of a campaign of violence and white supremacist terrorism in which over 100 Black South Carolinians were murdered. One goal of this racist campaign was to suppress Black political activity throughout the state.
In Hamburg, more than two dozen Black residents were rounded up, and six of them were murdered. Tillman personally executed Simon Coker, who had been elected to South Carolina's state legislator. A statue of Tillman still sits in front of the South Carolina state house.
In the decades following Reconstruction, white Southerners and political leaders made concerted efforts to suppress Black attempts to publicly celebrate the Fourth of July. Black Americans were forced to celebrate privately or in
At the same time, Southern newspapers often ran racist columns mocking Black Americans for supposedly not understanding the meaning behind the holiday. Here's one particularly vile example from the Atlanta Constitution (a precursor to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution) in 1901.pic.twitter.com/iN0qsR5yKY
Criticisms of America's founding were, of course, not limited to the Fourth of July. In May 1987, as the country was preparing to celebrate the Constitution's bicentennial, Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall delivered a speech highlighting the shortcomings of that document.
In Justice Marshall's speech he noted that the government devised by the founders "was defective, requiring several amendments, a civil war, and momentous social transformation" to be turned into the document it was in 1987.pic.twitter.com/bsnpk42DDN
Marshall also cautioned against treating the Constitution as a product of its time, noting that "the effects of the Framers' compromise have remained for generations. They arose from the contradiction between guaranteeing liberty and justice to all, and denying both to Negroes."pic.twitter.com/K5ODSqyNrl
Here is Justice Marshall's full speech concerning the bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution and his unwillingness to participate in the festivities with "flag-waving fervor": https://scholarship.law.vanderbilt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2686&context=vlr …
Twitter saattaa olla ruuhkautunut tai ongelma on muuten hetkellinen. Yritä uudelleen tai käy Twitterin tilasivulla saadaksesi lisätietoja.
