In what I intend to make an annual tradition, here’s Frederick Douglass’ “What to the Slave is Your Fourth of July?” as read by the late James Earl Jones. As I wrote last year, it’s powerful, made more so by Jones’ emotive baritone.

Douglass’ speech is alarmingly apropos right now—simply substitute “immigrant” for “slave”—

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 thanks-givings, 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 on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.

While this is the best-known passage from Douglass’ speech, there are many others equally worthy of recognition. Reading it in its entirety is both eye-opening and depressing. There are countless passages uncomfortably analogous to our current moment. Take, for example, this:

By an act of the American Congress, not yet two years old, slavery has been nationalized in its most horrible and revolting form. […] By that most foul and fiendish of all human decrees, the liberty and person of every man are put in peril. Your broad republican domain is hunting ground for men. Not for thieves and robbers, enemies of society, merely, but for men guilty of no crime. Your law-makers have commanded all good citizens to engage in this hellish sport. Your President, your Secretary of State, your lords, nobles, and ecclesiastics, enforce, as a duty you owe to your free and glorious country, and to your God, that you do this accursed thing. Not fewer than forty Americans, have, within the past two years, been hunted down, and, without a moment’s warning, hurried away in chains, and consigned to slavery, and excruciating torture. Some of these have had wives and children, dependent on them for bread; but of this, no account was made. The right of the hunter to his prey, stands superior to the right of marriage, and to all rights in this republic, the rights of God included! For black men there are neither law, justice, humanity, nor religion.

The Fugitive Slave Law makes mercy to them, a crime; and bribes the judge who tries them. An American judge gets ten dollars for every victim he consigns to slavery, and five, when he fails to do so. The oath of any two villains is sufficient, under this hell-black enactment, to send the most pious and exemplary black man into the remorseless jaws of slavery! His own testimony is nothing. He can bring no witnesses for himself. The minister of American justice is bound, by the law to hear but one side; and that side, is the side of the oppressor. Let this damning fact be perpetually told. Let it be thundered around the world, that, in tyrant-killing, king-hating, people-loving, democratic, Christian America, the seats of justice are filled with judges, who hold their offices under an open and palpable bribe, and are bound, in deciding in the case of a man’s liberty, to hear only his accusers!

Douglass is speaking of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850; it’s distressingly easy to imagine a similar edict being pronounced today—probably via executive order and summarily approved by the Supreme Court. In truth, it feels like we’re already well on our way.

I encourage you to read Douglass’ entire speech. While long, I found it quite enjoyable—I found myself reading it aloud—and extremely well written, despite Douglass’ claims that “With little experience and with less learning, I have been able to throw my thoughts hastily and imperfectly together.” One hundred seventy-three years later, and Douglass’ hasty and imperfect words still weigh heavily.