This will be Boston’s 14th 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, no registration required.

*Rain date: July 8th at noon

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 ― Community Conversations: Sister to Sister ― Hutchins Center for African & African American Research ― National Parks of Boston ― The New Democracy Coalition ― Royall House and Slave Quarters ― Underground Railway @ Central Square Theater ― UU Urban Ministry