Sherie Otis
June 9, 2018
AMH2091 - Class #59537
Professor Rudy Jean-Bart
Frederick Douglas and Henry Garnet
“What to the Slave, is the Fourth of July?” by Frederick Douglas and “A Call to Rebellion” by Henry Highland Garnet are two very moving and motivating speeches addressed to the Slaves of the United States of America. Frederick Douglas was asked to deliver his speech on July 4, 1852 in Rochester, New York to celebrate the Declaration of Independence Day. Henry Garnet delivered his speech to the National Negro Convention that was held in Buffalo, New York on August 21, 1843. These two speeches although very similar in the like were also very different.
To begin, both Frederick Douglas and Henry Garnet believed that slavery was wrong and that although there were many freed slaves at that time, people of color were still being “enslaved” by all the injustices taking place in America. Both abolitionists of their time, in their speeches Douglas and Garnet gave a brief history of slavery. Garnet talked about how “two hundred and twenty-seven years ago, the first of our
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Henry Garnet believed that slaves should stand up for themselves and rebel against their white slave masters. He believed that “neither GOD, nor angels, or just men, command you to suffer for a single moment. Therefore, it is your solemn and imperative duty to use every means, both moral, intellectual, and physical that promises success. “He believed that if the shoe was on the other foot where blacks were the oppressors and whites were the slaves they would have rebelled from the very beginning and without any hesitation at all. He knew as well that blacks outnumbered the whites and wanted to get that thought into the black slaves’ heads by repeatedly telling them to “remember that you are FOUR