Football player and racial justice activist Colin Kaepernick issued a fiery denouncement of Independence Day, calling it a “celebration of white supremacy.”
In a fierce rebuke, Kaepernick tweeted his condemnation along with a video of actor James Earl Jones reciting Frederick Douglass's July 5, 1852, speech “What to the Slave Is the 4th of July?”
“Black ppl have been dehumanized, brutalized, criminalized + terrorized by America for centuries, & are expected to join your commemoration of “independence”, while you enslaved our ancestors,” he wrote.
“We reject your celebration of white supremacy & look forward to liberation for all.”
The video includes a series of photos of slave auctions, Ku Klux Klan members, lynchings, videos of officers brutally beating Black inmates and of police brutality, and racist caricature drawings.
Excerpts from the speech by Douglass, an abolitionist who called out the hypocrisy of the Founding Fathers while also applauding their ideals of freedom, were read by his descendants in a film Saturday for NPR.