A Different 4th - Vicksburg and Frederick Douglass

Today, the day after America's Independence Day, and the 168th anniversary of Frederick Douglass' famous (but not famous enough) speech "What To the Slave Is The Fourth of July",  I am repeating a post (with some edits) from July 3, 2011, and adding more at the end.

I first learned about this different 4th of July on Ken Burn's classic TV mini series on the United States Civil War.

Vicksburg, Mississippi, in a former Confederate state, has an online listing of community events.  In 2011 I found, listed in here, along with the Farmers Market, Faith Fest and the Old Court House Flea Market, the "Red, White and Blue" Fourth of July weekend, and the Independence Day fireworks.  Nothing special, here.  Nothing different than what thousands of other cities and towns in the United States were offering, pre-pandemic, celebrating our nation's Independence Day.

Or is it different?

Several generations of citizens of Vicksburg, Mississippi didn't know what a hometown 4th of July celebration was like-because they didn't have one. Stores remained open.  People went about their business.  And stories were told, dark stories, about the Siege of Vicksburg and its surrender to the Union Army on July 4, 1863.  It is said that General Pemberton, the commanding general of the Confederate States of America forces at Vicksburg, chose to surrender Vicksburg to the Union army on Independence Day as he thought they would get more favorable terms of surrender.

After that surrender, Vicksburg did not celebrate Independence Day until 1945.

Even in 1997, they still had a problem with it.

Vicksburg is located on the Mississippi River, one of the most important waterways in our nation.  It was just as important, if not more so, in the 1860's.  It was vital for the Federals to take control of the Mississippi in order to win the war.

Vicksburg stood in the way.  So, it was put under siege by Union forces commanded by General Grant and starved into submission.  As a young girl growing up in the Bronx, I remember drawings in a textbook showing how the residents ended up taking refuge in caves dug into hillsides, and what they used for food as the siege progressed. Rats would have been a gourmet treat.

Towards the end, they were printing their newspaper on wallpaper because they had run out of paper.

For Vicksburg, July 4th didn't stand for our country's birthday but rather was symbolic of what its fellow citizens did to it back in 1863.  I can only think that its citizens going overseas and fighting World War II side by side with the descendants of its former enemies of 80 years before, to fight a strong evil threatening to overtake the world, is what finally started to heal those wounds. 

The descendants of those people still remember, too, which brings us to the present day.

Indeed, the wounds of the Civil War are still there, right underneath our collective skin, both North and South, black and white, Native American, other origins, not fully healed. This year, it is more obvious that not everyone celebrates the 4th of July as their Independence Day, because the do not yet feel free.  Vicksburg isn't alone in not feeling that "the 4th of July" is their holiday.

Here is an opinion piece on this.

You don't need to be a citizen of Vicksburg to feel alienated. Recent events have brought many things to our collective attention, including continued inequalities and parts of our history hidden away out of shame or other reasons.  We have had many years to resolve this situation, and we haven't.

Now, in the midst of a pandemic, we must finally face this head on.  Small steps have been taken, one of the most recent being in Mississippi, the last state to have the Confederate battle flag incorporated into their state flag. That flag was retired this week, but many think that's it ("mission accomplished") for Confederate symbols in state flags.  Part of the reason for this belief is that the "Confederate flag" so proudly displayed in many places even today, was not an official state flag of the Confederate States of America, but, rather, was a battle flag associated with General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia.

If we are just concerned with getting rid of Confederate symbols of flags, they are still in many state flags.

It's way past time to look at this history now, but we still have a long way to go. We are only at the beginning.  Changing flags, renaming music groups, and discussing name changes for sports teams is comparatively easy.  Changing hearts is a lot harder, but there are people now ready to do that work.

It's time for us to look again to Douglass, who adopted Rochester, New York as his home in his later years.  Even after growing up an enslaved person, he did not lose his faith in our country.

It's amazing (to me) that Frederick Douglass, at the end of his speech, was hopeful. He said:
"Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented, of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country......I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. While drawing encouragement from "the Declaration of Independence," the great principles it contains, and the genius of American Institutions, my spirit is also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age."

We are at that point again.  We are living the obvious tendencies of our age.

We write history as we live it. What will our children and grandchildren think when they read ours?