For those doubting that slavery still exists in the United States of America the following link is to your own government and information that it has.

[state.gov]

First thought... Conflation of issues.. Independence occurred long before the issue of slavery ... And to associate independence day with slavery shows a severe lack of historical understanding and knowledge...

All true, but show me any nation that did not become a nation or gain power by enslaving or brutalizing other human beings, I don't think there is one. IMO, ever nation has a dark side and we are no different.
Human have been doing this since we have been around, we are cruel to each other by nature. One would think with the brain power we hold we would of rose above such things by now but one can see by the state of our country and the world, we have a long ways to go when it comes to our humanity.

“America has been formed and shaped by slave patrols, gunslingers, Pinkerton and Baldwin-Felts detectives, gangs of strikebreakers, hired gun thugs, company militias, and the American Legion – originally right-wing World War I veterans who attacked union agitators…Vigilante groups in America are mostly white men who often prey on people of color and radicals. They are capitalism’s ideological vanguard, its shock troops used to break populist movements and tyrannize the oppressed.” Chris Hedges: From the article

Washington warned us of what forming political parties could bring us. If you look at the 2 party establishment we have today and its results, you can't by any means deny Washington was right.

"However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion." FAREWELL ADDRESS | SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 1796

What if I told you that everything you know or think about America is a scam? I've mentioned on occasions about how every president from Washington to today have given us some relative meaningful insights of warnings towards issues like the military complex and the wealthy managing to control our government. We've all seen the great graphics with such memorable sayings from many, right up to Obama. Although his come in todays videos for the most part as he tramps around making his new found fortunes. But they've all done so while serving those entities beneficial agendas.

Lets take that all know statement in the Declaration of Independence for example. All men are created equally. Yet spoken in a new country towards new ways of freedom under a system with slavery and demeaning its very native race. Utterly contradictory from the very beginning. What if I told you that's because we are still being controlled by the powers of the City of London?

It abides by its own rules, financial and criminal, creating effectively a tax-haven within the UK that cannot be policed by any of the usual watchdogs. The City of London has managed to continue unreformed from its medieval origins into the modern era for one reason alone: it is the perfect way for a wealthy elite to maintain their power and privilege by bypassing the imperfect democratic system operating outside its concrete shores, in the rest of the U.K. The City of London is a deeply corrupt fiefdom inside a slightly less corrupt Britain. If the mafia were given the chance to make themselves look legit, they might create in Italy something very much like the City of London.

[consortiumnews.com]

Of all sites, The Guardian for the good part of itself, being the fake news generator it is, has a number of pieces on this issue.

Well Douglass sure got it right. What he said is so relevant today:

Douglass:

“What to the American slave is your Fourth of July? I answer, a day that reveals to him, more than all the other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy – a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.”