The First Religious Society Unitarian Universalist and the Museum of Old Newbury will host a virtual community reading of Frederick Douglass's impassioned 1852 speech, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” Lend your voice to this powerful participatory event.
The Zoom link will be forwarded prior to the event.
The reading will be followed by a discussion led by humanities scholar Edward Carson. Carson, an independent historian, is also Dean of Multicultural Education and a member of the history department at The Governor's Academy, Byfield, Massachusetts.
This program is funded in part by Mass Humanities, which receives support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and is an affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey was born on the eastern shore of Maryland in February 1818, the son of an enslaved woman who died when he was seven and a white man he never identified.
Some of his youth was spent with his grandparents and an aunt. When he was eight, he was sent to Baltimore, where he lived with a ship's carpenter and learned to read. He later said of this experience, [Baltimore] "laid the foundation, and opened the gateway, to all my subsequent prosperity." By the time he was 15, he was sent to a farm where he was brutally treated by a slave breaker named Edward Covey.
By 1838, he achieved his dream of escaping from Baltimore where he was working at a shipyard. He fled the city arriving in New York on September 4. With him traveled Anna Murray, an abolitionist whom he met in Baltimore, and whom he married under his new name, Frederick Douglass.
Douglass made his way to New Bedford where he was a laborer. There, he became acquainted with the Liberator, an anti-slavery newspaper edited by William Lloyd Garrison, Newburyport native, who, for a time, became Douglass's advocate and mentor. Douglass began attending anti-slavery meetings and spoke at a convention held on Nantucket in 1841, giving a powerful and eloquent speech about his life in slavery.
After the convention, John A. Collins, a general agent of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, urged Douglass to become a lecturer for his organization. It was with Collins that Douglass arrived in Newburyport in September 1841 – just three years after his miraculous escape from slavery. He spoke at the Prospect Street Church on the corner of Fair and Prospect Streets and stayed at the home of abolitionist Richard Plumer on Federal Street.
The trip was not an easy one as the conductor on the train carrying them to New Hampshire requested that Douglass move to the rear of the train, and by the time he reached Dover, his clothes were torn and he had been beaten.
Douglass prevailed, building his career as a leading spokesman for abolition and racial equality. Throughout the 19th century, he was recognized in this country and Europe as a powerful orator, writer and activist for equal rights for both African Americans and women.
The original oration, presented on July 5, was given at the Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society in Rochester, New York, a city that was a center of abolitionist activities. This emotionally powerful and thought-provoking speech is as relevant today as it was in Douglass’s own lifetime.
(Editor's Note: For further reading, we recommend Frederick Douglass, Prophet of Freedom by David W. Blight. The book was selected as one of The New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of 2018.)
