July 5 · This Day in America
In Corinthian Hall in Rochester, the day after the celebrations, Frederick Douglass stands before an anti-slavery society and refuses to flatter the country that freed him only by his own escape. He praises the founders, then turns the knife with reverence: the blessings the nation celebrates are not shared. To the enslaved, he says, the Fourth of July reveals more than any other day the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. It is not a rejection of America's creed. It is a demand that America keep it. The speech is now considered one of the greatest orations ever delivered on American soil — patriotism as accusation, and as faith that the promise could still be made true.
Source: nmaahc.si.edu
Also on this day · 1946
Days after the United States detonated nuclear bombs at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific, a Paris designer unveils a tiny two-piece swimsuit and names it the bikini, hoping for a reaction as explosive as the news. He got it. It is a strange, very American footnote: while the atoll's people were removed from their home for tests that scarred it for generations, the word that survived in the language was a beach fashion. History keeps odd company.
Source: www.osti.gov
“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.”Frederick Douglass, 1852