LYNN — Community members made their way to Lynn Museum Monday morning for a special Fourth of July celebration.
The North Shore Juneteenth Association held its annual Frederick Douglass Reading Together event, where Douglass’s 19th-century fight for equality was revisited and honored. The event is normally held in the adjacent Frederick Douglass Memorial Park, but was relocated due to weather.
Through song, poem, and the words of Douglass himself, the event aimed to keep his legacy alive while also inspiring attendees to continue to fight against racial injustice.
Event organizer Wendy Joseph, North Shore Juneteenth Association founder and City Councilor-at-Large Nicole McClain, and Lynn Museum Executive Director Doneeca Thurston were central in making this year’s gathering happen.
Joseph explained the history of the event during her 15-year tenure. The reading initially took place at High Rock Tower, a location that has connections to Douglass from his time in Lynn nearly 200 years ago.
“High Rock Tower is an estate in the Highlands from the Hutchinson Family Singers,” Joseph explained. “They sang everywhere. They were abolitionists and also early adopters of women’s suffrage, and Frederick Douglass knew them.”
The Hutchinson family bonded with Douglass while both were on the same boat to the United Kingdom. Joseph said she was happy to relocate from High Rock Tower to the park when it was named after Douglass in 2021.
The ceremonies began with a passionate rendition of the Black national anthem by Janey David. Poet Michelle LaPoetica followed with a piece that melded elements of racial justice from both past and present. One of the poem’s messages emphasized how the majority of the country’s population descended from immigrants, despite the racist stigma that African-Americans are viewed by some as more foreign than other citizens.
“As you sit here and tell me to go back to where I came from,” LaPoetica recited. “I was born right here you insignificant crumb! And if you look back through the years you’ll find the truth in your family tree and oh, say you will see some-one, two, or three from your family crossed these borders by land or sea.”
Before LaPoetica concluded, she encouraged everyone in the crowd to acknowledge and appreciate the cultural diversity between them.
Before the marquee event, Joseph was joined by Department of Conservation and Recreation Regional Interpretive Coordinator Barbara Buls to make a surprise announcement. The pair unveiled an official DCR-sanctioned sign that will identify Frederick Douglass Memorial Park and explain its history. After that, a line of attendees formed, ready to recite Douglass’s “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” speech.
Douglass delivered the address to the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society on July 5, 1852. Each reader took to the microphone to recite one paragraph. Some prominent volunteer readers included state Sen. Brendan Crighton and Mayor Jared Nicholson.
In his address, Douglass used the Fourth of July’s status as a symbol of freedom to emphasize how African-Americans were still far from being truly free in 1852. He expressed his admiration for the Founding Fathers of the country, and compared their desire to secede from the United Kingdom to his desire to end slavery. He emphasized that many Americans were so far from freedom, despite the nation having been free for more than 70 years at the time.
“Fellow citizens, I am not wanting in respect for the fathers of this republic. The signers of the Declaration of Independence were brave men. They were great men too — great enough to give fame to a great age,” Douglass said in the speech. “It does not often happen to a nation to raise, at one time, such a number of truly great men… I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought light and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth July is yours, not mine.”
After an in-depth review of all the injustices that existed in the country at the time, Douglass ended his address positively, expressing his hope that things would change.
“Godspeed the day when human blood shall cease to flow! In every clime be understood, the claims of human brotherhood, and each return for evil, good, not blow for blow; That day will come all feuds to end. And change into a faithful friend each foe,” Joseph, McClain, and Thurston recited in unison.
