"What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July?"

When Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence that all men were endowed with the rights of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” he did not have in mind the rights of the hundreds of human beings he enslaved. But the enslaved population of the United States, and the abolitionists who supported them, like Frederick Douglass and John Brown, adopted the American symbols of revolution and freedom in their own fight for liberty. Joining me on this episode to discuss the power of symbols like the flag and Independence Day is historian Dr. Matthew Clavin , Professor of History at the University of Houston and author of Symbols of Freedom: Slavery and Resistance Before the Civil War . Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag , composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode audio is Frederick Douglass’s speech, “ What To the Slave Is the Fourth of July ?” originally delivered on July 5, 1852, at Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York, at a meeting organized by the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society, and performed by Chicago actor Anthony C. Brown. The mid-episode music is “ Dramatic Atmosphere with Piano and Viol…