What Douglass means is that the birth of freedom—the "sunshine"—that white Americans enjoyed when they declared independence from the British was not extended to slaves. The "unalienable rights" of man remained a mirage for people like them, trapped as they were in a condition of bondage, subject to the whims of their masters. Enslaved people were regularly whipped, often for no reason at all, and this is what Douglass is referring to when he talks about "stripes"—meaning the severe lacerations caused by whipping.
What Douglass hopes to do in this speech is to persuade his audience that the love of liberty expressed with such eloquence in the Declaration of Independence cannot just be an empty expression; it must be realized in practice. And for that to happen, slavery must be abolished once and for all. Then, and only then, will the promise of liberty for all contained in the Declaration be truly and fully realized.
When Frederick Douglass made the statement that the sunlight that brought health and healing to the whites has not done so for the blacks, he was speaking on July 4, 1852. Slavery had not been abolished in the United States. The people he addressed were free, but the slaves still toiled in the sun.
By "sunshine" Douglass refers metaphorically to the freedom and independence that whites wrested from British rule when they signed the Declaration of Independence and fought the Revolutionary War. Whites were literally freed from unjust laws and taxes. This gave whites in America a new lease on life and a sense of health or healing.
However, Independence Day can mean nothing to the black slaves, for they are not yet free. All the fourth of July is to them is literally another day to toil under the hot sun and be beaten—which is what Douglass means by being "brought stripes." Independence from England has meant continued enslavement for blacks. He wants whites to think about that as they celebrate "freedom."
This quote comes from Frederick Douglass's Independence Day Speech at Rochester in 1852, where he answered the question, "What to a slave is July 4th?" Frederick Douglass acknowledges the fact that the celebration of liberty by free white Americans reveals the "immeasurable distance" to the plight of enslaved African Americans living in the same country. He examines the concept of liberty celebrated by white Americans and exposes it as a fraud.
When Frederick Douglass contrasts the lives of white and black people in America, he says "The sunlight that brought light and healing to you has brought stripes and death to me." Douglass is literally speaking on the way that sunlight gives life to plants, which in turn provides sustenance to humans that nourishes their bodies. While the white citizens benefit from the sunlight, the enslaved African Americans suffer under its rays as they are exposed to the extreme heat when they toil in the fields. The metaphorical interpretation of this statement compares how one race benefits from America's liberty while the other race suffers under its oppression.
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