WRONG SIDE OF HISTORY

Frederick Douglass Statue Ripped From Its Base on Anniversary of His 1852 Anti-Slavery Speech

The statue of the famous abolitionist was destroyed on the anniversary of his 1852 Fourth of July speech in Rochester, New York.

A statue of abolitionist Frederick Douglass was torn from its base in Rochester, New York, on the anniversary of his famous 1852 anti-slavery speech “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July.” Police say the statue was removed Sunday near an Underground Railroad site where Douglass and Harriet Tubman worked to help slaves reach freedom and where he delivered his famous speech. The statue was later found near the Genesee River gorge about 50 feet away with damage to the base and to the statue’s finger; an investigation into the perpetrators was underway, the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle reported. In his famous speech, Douglass called Independence Day for a slave “a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.”