A group of about 50 people gathered at Teixeira Park on Union Street in Peterborough Friday to read from an abridged version of Frederick Douglass’s 1852 speech, “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro,” delivered on July 5 that year.
Peterborough was one of 12 towns around the state taking part in the event as part of the Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire’s (BHTNH) annual Frederick Douglass Community Reading. According to its website, BHTNH’s mission is to promote awareness and appreciation of African-American history and life in order to build more-inclusive communities today.
Sankofa Scholar and tour guide Sonya Martino organized the reading for the Portsmouth-based nonprofit, and said Douglass’s speech continues to serve as a reminder of the racial-justice work that needs to be done.
“What he said in 1852 still resonates today and people don’t see that,” said Martino. “Reading his speech is a powerful way to relay Douglass’s voice, and I believe people did do the best they could. This speech could have been written today.”
The speech begins by praising the Founding Fathers’ perseverance in the face of injustice, but it quickly becomes a cutting argument and condemnation against the institution of slavery and the Fugitive Slave Act.
In one passage read at Friday’s event, Douglass says, “What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer, a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.”
Peterborough resident Jonah Wheeler, 19, is a community organizer for Rights and Democracy and is also running for state representative. He read a passage from Douglass’s speech and said he’s deeply concerned that the United States is threatening to roll back protections for vulnerable groups of people. The speech, he said, is an “especially beautiful reminder about freedom” and how people can enact principles of fairness and justice.
“There’s so much being rolled back today in terms of rights. Life as we know it is threatened and this speech of what it means to be free for a Black man from a 150 years ago speaks so eloquently to the truth today,” he said. “I think Frederick Douglass could have been president.”
Wheeler was especially impressed with the speech’s ability to speak truth to power.
“Everyone understands the truth of the speech,” he said. “If everyone starts speaking the truth to the fire and brimstone of this moment, we can change the world and get the principles of freedom in the speech met.”
State Rep. Ivy Vann attended the reading and said she came because “it’s important to acknowledge the history of the United States.”
“This includes the things we’ve improved in, the things that still need work and the things we’re getting worse at,” she said. “One of the things I was struck by when I was reading was the way our judicial system is not reflecting the interests of the people. If 75% of the people believe something and this court says, ‘Well, actually no, we don’t think so,’ that’s how you get guillotines.”
Martino said she was pleased by the turnout but emphasized that even if two had shown up she would be happy.
“I said to my husband, ‘If two people show up to read, that’s fine,’” she said, adding that she and her husband recently read the speech out loud to each other. “The point is to have a conversation and this speech really gets at the throat of Americans and says, ‘You all are a bunch of hypocrites. You wanted to keep us ignorant so you could keep us enslaved, it’s your Independence Day, not ours.’ He really drives the point home. And that’ s why I do this. Because we need to have these conversations.”