July Fourth

Somehow I always knew that Frederick Douglass would sound something like James Earl Jones.  Here he is reading Douglass’s “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro” from 1852.  I’ll be celebrating the decisive Fall of Vicksburg in 1863.  It’s what history majors do.  My great-great grandfather (below looking all American Gothic and still wearing his war medals in 1915) fought in the entire campaign from Chickasaw Bayou to the city’s surrender.  His regiment would take the lead of the disastrous first assaults on the Confederacy’s doomed Mississippi citadel.  Have a good holiday weekend comrades!

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