Last year, we met on Zoom, but this year we are back in person! This will be our 13th annual communal reading of Frederick Douglass’s 1852 speech, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” Part of a series of statewide events supported by Mass Humanities, the reading provides an opportunity to open up discourse between community members about race, rights, and our responsibilities to the past and to each other.
Members of the public will take turns reading parts of the speech until they’ve read all of it, together. Everyone is welcome to read; this event is free and open to the public.
Co-conveners: Mass Humanities | Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race & Justice at Harvard Law School | Community Change, Inc. | Museum of African American History, Boston and Nantucket
Co-sponsors: Boston Mayor’s Office of Resilience and Racial Equity | Central Square Theater | Community Conversations: Sister to Sister | Everyday Boston | Friends of the Public Garden | Hutchins Center for African & African American Research | Jewish Voice for Peace – Boston | National Parks of Boston | The New Democracy Coalition | Office of the Chief Diversity Officers of Tufts University | Royall House and Slave Quarters | Union Capital | UU Urban Ministry