4th of July

http://www.infoplease.com/t/hist/slave-on-fourth/

For this week I chose a speech given by Frederick Douglass entitled "What to a slave is fourth of July."  I chose it not only because the content is interesting to me, but also because I feel that speeches have a very interesting quality to them.  I think that they are one of the few things in life that can be both private and public.  Like archived letters, postcards, etc they are written privately and usually come from the heart detailing a great deal of the author's opinions and stream of consciousness.  But unlike archived letters, they are more accesible because typically they are usually seen, read, and heard by far more people.  Because speeches have this specific quality, I would really like to use them as primary and secondary sources in my thesis.

For those who are unfamiliar with Douglass's speech, it basically calls out American citizens (more specifically white male citizens) for their extreme hypocrisy for the celebration of American "freedom" om the 4th of July. Douglass argues that since simply because of the color of skin, he is not granted the "freedom" that white males can access in America.  I chose this piece because whilst reading the Miles circular reasoning piece for this week, I was reminded about the severely hypocritical and unfair ways in which the United States came to be what it is today and I wanted something that echoed that.