Douglass called the Fourth of July a hollow mockery in 1852, and nothing has changed except that the empire is now more corrupt, more unequal, and more at war than the founders imagined. As with most years around the so-called Independence Day “holiday,” the Black masses and our accomplices of all races and ethnicities reflect on the sage words offered by Frederick Douglass on July 5, 1852, in Rochester, New York: What to the Slave is the 4th of July.