Somerville Museum To Host 'Reading Frederick Douglass Together'

SOMERVILLE, MA — This summer, communities across Massachusetts including Somerville are part of a statewide series of events focused on a speech written one-hundred seventy years ago.

Mass Humanities supports public readings of Frederick Douglass’s influential address, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” around the state. Readings and the discussions that follow can take many formats, but each event features a group of people gathered to read portions of the speech.

According to Mass Humanities, the readings provide an opportunity to open up discourse between community members about race, rights, and our responsibilities to the past and to each other.

Frederick Douglass escaped from slavery in 1838 and lived for many years in Massachusetts. He delivered the Fourth of July speech on July 5, 1852, in Rochester, New York, to the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society.

"The most celebrated orator of his day, Douglass’ powerful language, resolute denunciations of slavery, and forceful examination of the Constitution challenge us to think about the histories we tell, the values they teach, and if our actions match our aspirations,” Mass Humanities said in a news release. "To quote Douglass, 'We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the future.’”

Since 2009, Mass Humanities has supported the Reading Frederick Douglass Together (RFDT) program. Last year, the organization responded to the growing local demand for new conversations about history, race, and democracy in local towns and cities by funding 24 RFDT events, a nearly 3-fold increase over the 2019 program.

“First delivered in 1852, Frederick Douglass’s ‘What to the Slave is the Fourth of July’ is timeless,” Brian Boyles, Executive Director of Mass Humanities, said in a statement. “This year, the legislatures of 36 states have introduced or passed bills that would outlaw honest discourse about the history and impact of racism in America—measures that could ban from schools and libraries the reading of Douglass’s speech and the words and the works of other African American authors, poets, playwrights and thought leaders. We need to hear and heed Douglass’s words now more than ever.”

This summer, a total of 23 organizations in Massachusetts will be hosting their own RFDT events with the help of funding made possible by the National Endowment of the Humanities’ (NEH) A More Perfect Union.

Somerville’s RFDT event will take place on Thursday, June 30, time TBD at Bow Market, located at 1 Bow Market Way.