Dover Public Library is hosting this year’s Frederick Douglass Community Read of “What to the Slave is your the Fourth of July?” on Friday, July 1, at 12 p.m.
The library is seeking volunteers interested in reading sections of the speech Douglass gave in 1852. For more information about the program or to sign up to read, visit tinyurl.com/DoverFDRead. Please share it with anyone you think might be interested.
The event will be outside on the lawn, weather permitting. If not, it will be held in the Lecture Hall on the library’s top floor. People will be asked to read sections of an abridgement of Frederick Douglass’s “What to the American slave is your Fourth of July” speech. It is broken into 44 sections.
Douglass was born into slavery in Maryland around 1817, escaped to freedom in 1838, and lived for a time in New Bedford and Lynn, Massachusetts. He became a national leader of the abolitionist movement and a voting rights champion for African Americans and women, among other legacies. Douglass was approximately 35 years old when he addressed the Rochester Anti-Slavery Sewing Society in Rochester, New York, on July 5, 1852, which became known as “What to the Slave is your Fourth of July?”
The Dover event is among numerous simultaneous readings across the state, including in Rochester, Rollinsford and Portsmouth.
Source: https://www.dover.nh.gov/services/online-services/news-events/news-2022/library-seeks-volunteers-to-help-read-frederick-douglass-what-to-the-slave-is-the-fourth-of-july.html
