On July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass stood before the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society and asked one of the most searing questions in American history: "What, to the slave, is the Fourth of July?"

To answer Douglass's question, we have to go back to the Revolution itself; to the choices Black Americans made in wartime, to the ways they read, used, and interrogated the Declaration of Independence, and to the alternative celebrations they created when the Fourth of July felt like someone else's holiday.

Historians Christopher Bonner and Martha S. Jones help us explore what the Fourth of July meant for African Americans in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and how their experiences with the Fourth contributed to the larger history of the nation's founding.

Christopher's Website | Book
Martha's Website | Book
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/277

RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES
🎧 Episode 157: The Revolution's African American Soldiers
🎧 Episode 166: Freedom and the American Revolution
🎧 Episode 245: Celebrating the Fourth of July
🎧 Episode 255: Birthright Citizens
🎧 Episode 434: The Frank Brothers, Freeborn Black Soldiers in the American Revolution
🎧 Episode 439: When the Declaration of Independence Was News
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BFW Revisited: Whose Fourth of July?