"What, to the American Slave, Is Your Fourth of July?" — An Hour of Resistance

“I ask you, O white man, if it is justice to keep us from the rights of citizenship because our skin is not colored like yours?”
— William Apess, Pequot writer and preacher, 1833

A Public Reading of Voices in Resistance
This Fourth of July, join us for a powerful, hour-long read-along that brings together the voices of those historically silenced or sidelined by America’s celebrations of freedom. Through the words of Black, Indigenous, and white anti-enslavement figures—free and enslaved, radical and reformist—we share the deep contradictions between liberty and bondage in the American past and meditate upon how they continue. From Frederick Douglass’s searing 1852 address to the grief-laced reflections of Harriet Jacobs, from Native voices like William Apess, resisting dispossession to Frances Harper’s eloquent calls for justice, this program holds space for the truths that fireworks often try to drown out.

We will also reflect on the original purpose behind the Statue of Liberty—a gift conceived by French abolitionists to honor the end of slavery in the United States, not simply to welcome new immigrants. Paired with poetic visions from Langston Hughes and Emma Lazarus, these readings remind us that civic memory must be inclusive, truthful, and alive.

Rather than celebrate the myths of independence, this ONLINE presentation invites us to hear the voices that call for a reckoning with history—and invite a reimagining of freedom itself.

Today, as voting rights are rolled back, histories are banned from classrooms, bodily autonomy is curtailed, and new forms of economic and racial subjugation emerge under familiar banners, the voices of the past echo with renewed urgency. This reading insists that the Long Emancipation is not yet complete. We gather not simply to remember, but to remind: freedom, like justice, is always ephemeral, and up to each of us to achieve.

Join us for a 75-minute public reading of radical voices who redefined what liberty means in America. From Indigenous journalists and enslaved mothers to poets and prophets, this event traces the deep contradictions of the Fourth of July—and the enduring struggle for freedom that it often forgets.