"On Independence Day, 1852, Frederick Douglass gave an angry, eloquent address that asked, 'What to the slave is the Fourth of July?' Every account quotes the fugitive-turned-abolitionist speaking truth to white power: '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 denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery.' But fewer commentators note that when, at the end of his speech, Douglass predicted slavery's demise, he drew his 'encouragement from the Declaration of Independence, the great principles it contains, and the genius of American Institutions,' as well as from a spirit of enlightenment that he believed was growing on both sides of the Atlantic. After emancipation, Douglass never stopped condemning the hypocrisy of white Americans—or continuing to base his hopes for equality on traditions he and they held in common." Michael Kazin