Hancock: July 4 is a call to fulfill, not destroy
By Michael A. Hancock | Commentary, Substack
Rediscovering Frederick Douglass’s Real Message
Every year around this time, we dust off the words of Frederick Douglass’s famous 1852 speech, "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?", and parade them around like fireworks—bright, dramatic, and quickly forgotten. In recent years, Douglass has been appropriated into the modern progressive narrative, a voice supposedly echoing today’s claims that America was founded as a white supremacist project, rooted not in liberty but in racial hierarchy. That’s the popular takeaway.
But that’s not Douglass’s message. Not even close.
Douglass’s words, when read in full, don’t damn the Constitution or the founding ideals—they uphold them. He doesn't condemn the Declaration of Independence as a fr...
