You're listening to Comedy Central. July fourth, it's that glorious day when we celebrate America's independence and Great Britain. And it's also my birthday. I said, it's my birthday, and if y'all give me donuts again, I'm gonna hurt somebody. But despite that, there are black folks out there who have a complicated relationship with the fourth of July, you know, because of all the slavery and segregation and redlining and beliefy brutality and Megan the Stallion not getting the respect
she deserves. And I get that, but did you know that there was a time when July four was a very black holiday. In fact, there was a time when America thought black people celebrated July fourth a little too much. Here's the story. Before the Civil War, Independence Day was a day for white people to say, eelebrate by parading around town and getting wasted on cheap foods. It was
basically a Patriots game for the original patriots. But for the growing antislavery movement, July fourth was a shameful day that represented America's hypocrisy, because how are you going to celebrate freedom when you're chaining up millions of people. That's like Britney Spears, Dad's throwing the party because he can
write his own checks. And no one expressed this anger better than Frederick Douglas in a speech he gave on July fourth, eighteen fifty two, where he told white Americans that the existence of slavery in this country brands your Republicanism as a sham, your humanity as a base pretense, and your Christianity as a lie. Damn. That was a read straight from the Library of Congress. I would have been like, yeah, and your wigs look googlous, your petticoat
smell like horseballs, and your wood teeth got termmites. But you're all dying of consumption. Ask I know doubt when I see it. But then the Civil War happened, and it completely flipped the script in July fourth, especially in the South, because now black people can actually celebrate freedom, and white Southerners were in no mood to celebrate the Independence day of a country that had just whooped their assets. So suddenly Independence Day became an almost exclusively black holiday.
In the former Confederacy, black people had picnics, they watched fireworks, they recited the Emancipation Proclamation in the Thirteenth Amendment, which sounds like fun except for reading on those documents. I don't know, maybe if they put like a beat to it or something neat the sleepy nor involuntary servitude except is punishment for crumps of the party. Shelley should exist
within the United States. Now, it's no surprise that racist whites didn't like Black people celebrating their freedom from racist whites, so they decided the party at the stop. Starting in the eighteen seventies, white mobs began a hacking Black gatherings of July fourth, and soon the state legislature's pass laws banning celebrations near black neighborhoods, pushing parades out of city limits, and even forbidding street vendors from setting up food saws
and black areas. Do you know how racist you have to be to want less kunnel cake? Basically, these racist rod bakers were the original barbecue backs, and stopping Black celebrations with just one part of their century long struggle
against black freedom and racial justice. So I don't know about you, but this July fourth, I'll be celebrating Independence Day as hard as I celebrate Junete as a day of freedom for all Americans, not just because it's fun, but also it's because they get to piss off all those dead racist watching from hell, and also because it's my birthday. Now give me all that fun okake, Happy Independence,
say to everybody. Watch The Daily Show weeknights at eleven Central Armed Companies Central in stream full episodes anytime on Paramount Plus. This has been a Comedy Central podcast