Browse Famous Historical Events

Frederick Douglass, an abolitionist and a former slave, delivers his powerful speech, "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?", in Rochester, New York, at an event organized by the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Sewing Society. Douglass used the occasion to remind all of the continuing enslavement of millions of people and poignantly articulated the stark contrast between the ideals of liberty and the reality of bondage for enslaved people.