ITEM PHOTO BY OWEN O’ROURKE
Wendy Joseph looks over her publicity sign for the sixth annual Community Celebration, which will be held at High Rock Tower Park on Sunday.
BY BRIDGET TURCOTTE
LYNN — The sixth annual Community Celebration at High Rock Tower Park will be held Sunday at 6 p.m.
The free event will feature a reading of “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” by Frederick Douglass, a leader of the abolitionist movement after escaping from slavery in Maryland.
Douglass had strong ties to the city. He was in Lynn during the early 1840s, where he wrote his first autobiography, “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave.”
He became friends with the Hutchinson Family Singers, who donated High Rock Tower to the city.
“His famous 1852 speech talks about freedom and what it was like for the slaves on the Fourth of July,” said Wendy Joseph, project manager. “A fifth-grader might read one paragraph, then next will be a city councilor, next a teacher. Everybody gets up and reads a paragraph.”
Following the reading, the tower will open for tours where people can watch fireworks.
The celebration will kick off with a rededication ceremony to commemorate High Rock Tower as a National Register of Historic Places site. The ceremony will be performed by the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War, an organization dedicated to preserving the history and legacy of heroes who fought to save the Union.
Joseph said the communal reading is meaningful because it’s recited on land where Douglass was likely to have stood.
Pony rides, face painting and balloon twisting will be available for children. Vendors representing the many cultures found in the Highlands neighborhood will sell food, including Colombian- and Haitian-style dishes. City Councilor Richard Colucci will provide pizza.
Attendees can bring their own picnics and packed lunches.
Latin and Hip Hop dance groups, the Lynn Interfaith Church choir and an African drummer will provide entertainment. A colonial reenactor will read the Declaration of Independence.
The Haitian Action Orphans Mission, a Lynn nonprofit that benefits Haitian orphans and needy children, is an event sponsor.
Bridget Turcotte can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @BridgetTurcotte.
