Rethinking “Whose Fourth of July?” Douglass, Mills, & Radical Liberalism

• In Event: Frederick Douglass and the American Political Tradition

Abstract

In “Whose Fourh of July?” Charles Mills argued that “everything” Douglass claimed in “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July” is “wrong”. In this essay, I reconsider Mills’s argument in the light provided by his later defense of radical liberalism.

Author

• Nicholas R. Buccola, Claremont McKenna College