“By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Yea! we wept when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there, they that carried us away captive, required of us a song; and they who wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.”
Fellow-citizens; above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, “may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!” To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world. My subject, then fellow-citizens, is American slavery. I shall see, this day, and its popular characteristics, from the slave’s point of view. Standing, there, identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July! (Frederick Douglass, “What, to the slave, is the Fourth of July”)
The full speech is HERE.
On this Fourth, could we not resolve to finally be that “more perfect union?” Could we not resolve that this year we will determine for freedom to ring for truly everyone in our nation?
A couple of quotes from Jackie Robinson:
“There’s not an American in this country free until every one of us is free.”
“But as I write these words now I cannot stand and sing the National Anthem. I have learned that I remain a black in a white world.”
Today… be it resolved… we will keep pressing in for the sake of those who have gone before.
Apprentice 2 Jesus 