Readers huddled on the Boston Common Tuesday for the 15th year in a row to recite Frederick Douglass’ “What to the American slave is your Fourth of July?”, a tradition that asks onlookers to consider the legacies of slavery and racism in today’s America.
The address, delivered in 1852 before the Rochester Ladies Anti-Slavery Society, bewails the hypocrisy of America celebrating freedom and the signing of the Declaration of Independence despite the country’s reliance on the bondage and forced labor from Black enslaved people.
“Douglass’ words resonate with a lot of different people,” said Brian Boyles, executive director of Mass. Humanities recently told GBH’s Culture Show about setting up the event. “Focusing in on the Fourth of July gives people the chance to reckon with history, to stand shoulder to should and to really try to build understanding. It’s rare that we get that opportunity.”
The nonprofit Mass Humanities sponsors readings of the speech across the state during both Black History Month and close to the Fourth of July holiday. Many of the readers among the small crowd Tuesday were repeat participants familiar with Douglass’ speech.
“This speech is powerful,” said Gerard Grimes, a Union Army reenactor from Dorchester who read parts of the speech while in uniform. Grimes said he tries to be a part of the reading to promote its words.
“Frederick Douglass knew what he said was true, and it is relevant to today,” he said.
Others, like Eric Murphy visiting from Ireland, joined the reading after stumbling upon it.
“I was walking through this park and I saw the name ‘Frederick Douglass’ and that resonated with me,” he said, recalling a quote from Douglass that compared the plight of the Irish immigrant to that of the enslaved people in the United States.
“We [Irish people] were pretty oppressed, but nothing compared to the Black population in the United States, which is just an absolute sacrilege against humanity for me. So, when I came by this, I had to stop and listen, I had to learn a little bit more and say a few words as well,” said Murphy.
“Douglass is reminding us of fundamental contradictions that we live with every day,” said David Harris, former managing director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard Law School. Harris has read the Douglass speech with Mass Humanities each year since the public recitations began in 2009.
“The fact is that we are continuing to exclude people from full participation and membership in society ... and until all of us have those rights, the ideals of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence will not be realized,” said Harris.
Tuesday’s recitation took place on the Boston Common beside the Robert Gould Shaw and the 54th Regiment Memorial — dedicated to one of the nation’s first all-Black regiments during the Civil War.
