THE EDITOR, Sir:
THAT TROGLODYTE talk-show host Wilmot Perkins, who praises and makes an absolute of Thomas Jefferson's infamous Declaration of Independence, which omitted American Blacks, Indians and Women from his phrase 'all men are created equal', is no doubt ignorant of the existence of a famous American Independence Day address delivered on July 4, 1852, by Frederick Douglass.
Douglass, in whose honour National Hero Marcus Garvey named one of the ships of the Black Star Liner, was a slave who escaped at age 21 from Baltimore, Maryland in the South, to the North where he eventually became a journalist.
Thirteen years before the end of chattel slavery in the United States, in 1865, and 76 years after the slaveowner Jeffferson's American Declaration Of Independence from British colonialism, July 4, 1776 , Douglass declared:
"Fellow citizens: Pardon me, and allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here today? What have I or those I represent to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? And am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits, and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?
"What to the American slave is your Fourth of July? I answer, a day that reveals to him more than all other days of 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 sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgiving , 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. There is not a nation of the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour.
"Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without rival."
Douglass' remarks were gleaned from Howard Zinn's 729-page magnum opus 'A People's History Of The United States 1492-PRESENT' published 2003 by Harper Collins.
Given Perkins' subjective idealist outlook, by which I mean if a tree falls in Africa and Perkins isn't there when it hits the ground it does not make a sound, in addition to the fact that he's a parochial reader and 'thinker' under no obligation to back-up his thoughts with progressive action, I do not expect him to be shamed into researching the complexity of the historical period he oversimplifies on-line.
Will he quote Douglass the slave with the consistency and intensity with which he quotes Jefferson the slave master? No. Interest moves the lives of men and women and it is not in the interest of Perkins to recite repeatedly the words of the man who inspired our great Marcus Garvey.
I am etc.,
ERIC 'MCKO' McNISH
jamaicabeat@hotmail.com
P.O. Box 393,
Kingston 10
