Fourth of July vs Juneteenth

ANGLO AMERICA, 29 Jun 2026

Fritz Pointer – TRANSCEND Media Service

26 Jun 2026 – As the US approaches its 250^th birthday, listen to Frederick Douglass as he delivers a Fourth of July oration in the city of Buffalo, N.Y. in the year 1852. A black man, a runaway slave asked to celebrate white peoples’ freedom.

“What to the slave is your Fourth of July? In 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….a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking, and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour.

“Go where you may, search where you will…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.”

I submit that it is as relevant today as it was 174 years ago. Frederick Douglass understood then, as we must understand today, that the American Revolution of 1776 was not fought for the freedom of all would be North Americans; rather it was fought to protect the institution of chattel slavery; so that, white Americans could continue to deny freedom to Black people. Imagine that. Fighting a war to be free to deny freedom to others! Early in this speech, Douglass asks: “Do you mean citizens to mock me by asking me to speak today” on July 4^th?  Instead, Douglass insists, “This 4^th of July is yours, not mine.”

And until white Americans understand this, like we understand this, they will, in Douglass’ words be “false to the past, false to the present and solemnly bind itself to be false to the future.”  The revolt of 1776 brought about a worsening of conditions for African and Indigenous Americans. As such, 1861 (The Civil War) can be seen as an extension of 1776 and the failure to resolve the matter of slavery.

This is why Black Americans insisted on a National Holiday honoring OUR Freedom: Juneteenth! Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. The law existed. And still, for 900 days (three years) men, women, and children kept working fields in Texas like nothing had changed – because nothing had changed for them. No enforcement. No Union soldiers. No paperwork delivered to the plantations that mattered.

It wasn’t an accident, either. Slaveholders in Louisiana, Mississippi and Arkansas packed up and moved enslaved people into Texas as Texas became the last safe harbor for slavery in America. On purpose. And the 13^th Amendment, six months after Juneteenth, offered a ramp right back into slavery stating that “slavery is prohibited except as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” Southern legislatures moved immediately passing Black Codes – laws that applied only to Black people. Vagrancy or being unemployed were grounds for arrest.

Then came Convict Leasing. The state could lease you to a coal mine, a railroad or plantation, the same one you were just “freed” from.

One of white America’s, and the minority white world’s, biggest flaws is underestimating the intelligence of people of the global majority.

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Fritz Pointer is a retired professor of English and African American Studies.  He is the vice president of Democratic World Federalists and has published numerous scholarly articles such as African Oral Epic Poetry: Praising the Deeds of a Mythic Hero (2013).  Being the older brother of the popularly known singing group, The Pointer Sisters, he has co-authored Fairytale: the Pointer Sisters’ Family History. Pointer’s main interests include combating racism, advancing human rights, ending war, eliminating nuclear weapons, and nonviolent solutions to global problems.

This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 29 Jun 2026.

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