"What to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer; a day that reveals 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 denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted
impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery."
"Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the
Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last,
lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for
revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival."
Choose one of these passages above. Identify and write the claim Douglass makes.