Content area
Full Text
Frederick Douglass spoke to a multiracial public sphere by engaging in "antagonistic cooperation" with white and black abolitionists. Far from being a relic of "black history," he served as an "integrative ancestor" or all those trying to help build a multiracial democracy. Douglass ,]uly 5 Speech is placed in the context of his position at "a sort of half-way place" between racial collectives. Douglass' interracial rhetoric was developed to engage the different constituents of his multiracial audiences. Douglass sought to "redeem" both Enlightenment and Biblical egalitarian ideals in order to construct a multiracial "imagined community. "
On July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass gave an address entitled "What to the Slave is the 4th of July?," often called the ` July 5 Speech" because Douglass attacked the hypocrisy of Independence Day celebrations in a slave-holding republic. William McFeely (1991) called it "the greatest antislavery oration ever given" (p. 73).1 I would agree with that assessment, and add that it is also a text with deep poetic resonance and moral vision. I will examine here some rhetorical strategies Douglass employed in order to effectively communicate with the different constituents of his multiracial audience. Since many of these strategies were derived from Bible stories and Enlightenment/"natural rights" philosophy, I will pay particular attention to the streams of Christian and political egalitarianism which fed Douglass' vision.
I have three main goals:
1) to give a sense of Douglass' stature in his own time;
2) to deepen our understanding of Douglass' biracial identity and political philosophy, and of how this makes him an "integrative ancestor"; and
3) to illustrate the continuing timeliness of Douglass' critique of American racialism. In a conclusion on the contemporary implications of Douglass' life and thought, I will examine some of the aftershocks Douglass is still causing in the 1990s. These repercussions range from the rap star KRS-One's dismissial of Douglass as a "house nigger" and a "sellout," to political theorist Michael Lind's (1995) view of Douglass as "the greatest American" and as a "standard-bearer" for a transracial "fourth American revolution" . 378).2
As Gerald Fulkerson (1972) notes, Douglass has been "largely ignored by rhetorical critics" (p. 261). This does not seem to be for want of testimonies of Douglass' enormous talents as a speaker,...