The New York Times Disunion blog has a short piece from me today about Emancipation Day and what Frederick Douglass called the “sham” of the Fourth of July. Slave writer Harriet Jacobs leads the festivities. This piece includes excerpts of the her only public speech to have survived. On August 1, 1864, speaking to wounded members of the U.S. Colored Troops, Jacobs proclaimed:

To-day, you are in arms for the freedom of your race and the defence of your country—to-day this flag is significant to you. Soldiers you have made it the symbol of freedom for the slave, unfurl it, stand by it, until the breeze upon which it floats is so pure, that a slave cannot breathe its air.