A flyer for the series of recitations across the state of Douglass's famous speech "What to the slave is the Fourth of July?"

DURING THE YEARS of preparation for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, I’ve known one thing for certain: on July 4, 2026, I will read Frederick Douglass somewhere in Massachusetts.

This is the 18th year in which Mass Humanities has sponsored readings of Douglass’s famous speech “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” This year, fittingly, 76 communities signed on to read the speech. While each event is different, most take the form of a shared recitation of the speech, with one person reading a passage, then handing over the microphone for a neighbor to read the next.

The address is a searing critique that begins with praise for the founders’ ideals before lambasting the hypocrisy of a nation that claimed to treasure liberty while millions of its people lived in chains. Douglass weaves together a deep understanding of the revolutionary era with his own experiences of the slave trade, including the horrors inflicted by the Fugitive Slave Act.

I love parades and fireworks, but I know of nothing more meaningful or more patriotic than coming together with my fellow Americans to revel in this work of rhetorical genius and its demands for our democracy. (You can find a full list of readings here.)

These community-driven events present a stark contrast to the plans for this summer in Washington, DC, where a gluttonous, angry attempt to cleanse our past has focused on garish construction projects, staging concerts featuring C-list celebrities, and generating revenue for a circle of people with connections to the president. Instead of a message of unity, the public receives another airing of grievances, with UFC fights and new statues to boot. With millions of dollars of public money and one person to please, these efforts are neither patriotic nor surprising.

This summer, residents here have an opportunity to choose a different path. By reading the speech Douglass delivered on July 5, 1852, we can follow in the footsteps of the many Massachusetts residents who worked alongside the abolitionist leader and unrivaled orator. Rather than worshipping at the foot of new statues, we can uplift the lives and courage of those who worked together to win more freedoms for their fellow Americans.

Douglass’s story is a Massachusetts story. The Black community of New Bedford sheltered Douglass and his wife Anna Murray when they arrived in 1838, following their escape from slavery in Maryland. Three years later, at an anti-slavery convention on Nantucket, Douglass rose and spoke to an integrated audience for the first time. Douglass penned his first autobiography at his home in Lynn, where he lived from 1841 to 1847, and all five of his children were born in Massachusetts.

During his speaking tours, Massachusetts families opened their homes to Douglass at considerable legal and social risk. Integrated audiences filled churches, village greens, and meeting houses from Martha’s Vineyard to Stockbridge.

According to research by Professor Anne Mattina of Stonehill College, Douglass delivered speeches in 120 Massachusetts cities and towns between 1841 and 1861. In 1844, more than 6,000 people arrived at Tranquility Grove in Hingham by train, by horse, by boat — the largest anti-slavery gathering of its kind — to listen to him, share a meal, and commit themselves to the unfinished work of the Republic.

Douglass’s Fourth of July speech remains deeply relevant as we mark the nation’s 250th anniversary. He knew the Declaration intimately and took its promises seriously — more seriously, he argued, than the nation that produced it.

“Your fathers staked their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor on the cause of their country,” he said — on the proposition that all men are created equal. “The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes.”

But for the enslaved, he told his audience, the Fourth of July was not a celebration but a reminder that the Declaration’s promises still did not apply to them or their kin. With detailed, first-hand descriptions of families torn apart at slave markets, Douglass declared that America was “false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future.” The country’s only hope lay in the vanquishing of slavery, a victory that Douglass and his movement lived to see. This is a patriotic history to celebrate.

Reading Frederick Douglass Together began in 2009 when Mass Humanities was invited by Community Change and the Museum of African American History to join a tradition that had existed in Black communities for decades.

The Douglass movement has changed significantly in recent years. In 2019, there were 17 public readings, most of them hosted by history organizations. The events of 2020 and the establishment of Juneteenth as a national holiday led many more organizations to turn to Douglass. Today, we are honored that so many of those organizations continue to read Douglass, even in the face of the retrenchment America has seen since 2025.

We are also grateful that readings have been scheduled at adult education classes and on college campuses, at community development corporations and Juneteenth picnics, on town commons and on the beach. We welcomed 28 first-time partners this year, each led by people who decided this was the year to begin their own tradition.

The sacrifices made by Douglass and his movement should be an inspiration to every American—especially those of us living in Massachusetts. They show us that dissent against an unjust government was not only the spark of the Revolution but the catalyst for a long fight that followed to end a shameful and formative chapter in our history.

Despite efforts to make the 250th a celebration of one man’s vision for Washington, no one person can lay claim to our history nor take credit for progress. Instead, we see that many, many people have continued to work for decades, through compromise and oppression, elections won and lost, to make the Declaration live up to its stated goal of equality for all.

Reading Frederick Douglass this year is a chance to reaffirm that in Massachusetts, we never gave up on that goal. Douglass famously reminded us, “We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and the future.” This year, we can do that work together.

Brian Boyles is executive director of Mass Humanities.