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Sen. Moore to speak at Mass Humanities event honoring Frederick Douglass speech
BOSTON – Sen. Richard T. Moore, D-Uxbridge, will be joining other state and city officials, schoolchildren, passersby, and other members of the public to gather in front of the State House at noon on Tuesday, June 2nd, to hear and participate in a communal reading of Frederick Douglass’s fiery speech, “The Meaning of the Fourth of July for the Negro.” It is the kickoff event for a series of grassroots-level readings across the state, leading up to Independence Day. “This event provides a unique opportunity to celebrate the accomplishments of Frederick Douglass, and the roads that he has paved in Civil Rights activism,” remarked Sen. Moore. “Representing an area that welcomed Douglass over 150 years ago, I am honored to participate in the reading of his passionate ‘Fourth of July’ speech.” Sen. Moore, who represents the Worcester & Norfolk District, grew up in the Town of Hopedale, where Frederick Douglass visited on February 25, 1842 to speak about abolitionism to Town Meeting members. Two years later in 1844, on the 25th of June, Douglass visited with the Anti-Slavery Society of the Town of Uxbridge, where Sen. Moore now resides. “This is an opportunity for us to take up the conversation begun in Philadelphia by Barack Obama and examine issues of racial justice in America today,” said Mass Humanities Executive Director David Tebaldi, who is also a former classmate of Sen. Moore’s at Clark University. In the speech, first delivered on July 5th, 1852 in Rochester, NY, Douglass took exception to being asked to commemorate the signing of the Declaration of Independence, asking the crowd, “Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak today? What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July?" The statewide project is called “Reading Frederick Douglass in the Era of Barack Obama.” In addition to Mass Humanities, several other organizations are encouraging community groups around the state to participate, including the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard Law School, and Boston-based Community Change, Inc. -- an organization which has conducted readings of the speech annually for many years now. “The struggle to dismantle institutionalized racism is ongoing,” said Community Change Director Paul Marcus. “In many ways it has only gotten worse in the decades following the fervor of the Civil Rights Movement.” Adds Houston Institute Managing Director David Harris: “Looking at the health care, criminal justice, housing, and other systems, the evidence is overwhelming that tens of thousands of U.S. citizens continue to suffer unfairly because of the color of their skin.” Everything one would need to organize a communal reading and discussion of the speech is available online at www.masshumanities.org including the speech, discussion guidelines, publicity materials and other resources that can be customized, downloaded, and printed as needed. As a special incentive, Mass Humanities is offering $150 plus a DVD copy of the documentary John Brown's Holy War to the first ten organizations that submit written and video documentation of their events. Northampton-based Mass Humanities is affiliated with the National Endowment for the Humanities-which funded the Douglass project-and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Mass Humanities conducts and supports projects that use history, literature, philosophy, and the other humanities disciplines to strengthen and enhance civic life across the Commonwealth. For further information about initiatives, grant deadlines, and awarded grants, visit: www.masshumanities.org. |
