The following is from his speech "What to the slave is the 4th of July?" Granted he was writing during the period of slavery, but given African Americans are still under wage slavery and slaughter from police forces, these words still ring true about this holiday for the privileged whites celebrating their freedom from England while we still enslave populations in the US.
"This Fourth is yours, not mine. You may rejoice; I must mourn. [...] What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; 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. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sound of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants brass fronted impudence; your shout of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages."
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