Community Reading of Frederick Douglass’ 4th of July Speech

Thursday, July 4, 2024, 10 a.m. to 11 a.m.

Horton Grove, 5925 Jock Road, Bahama, NC

(You might find this address to be better than the Durham one: 5925 Jock Road, Bahama, NC.)

Free 

Commemorate Independence Day with a reading of Frederick Douglass’ powerful Fourth of July address, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July.” 

This is a participatory community reading. Every year, 60 volunteers sign up to read passages from the speech in front of the slave dwellings at Horton Grove. You may sign up as a reader when you arrive.

Douglass delivered this powerful abolitionist speech on July 5, 1852 at an Independence Day celebration in Rochester, New York. Douglass’ speech remains one of the most famous abolitionist texts in U.S. history. The speech resonates today, inviting all to reflect on the history of slavery, freedom, and the United States’ founding ideals. 

Bring a chair or blanket to sit on the grounds. The event will be outdoors at the historic slave quarters at Horton Grove. Attendees must walk less than one hundred yards over uneven grass or gravel to reach the reading site. 

This free event will last about 1 hour, with the option to tour the original slave dwellings at Horton Grove available afterwards. Stagville State Historic Site, 5828 Old Oxford Highway in Durham, contains the remnants of one of the largest plantations of the pre-Civil War South. The plantation belonged to the Bennehan-Cameron family, whose combined holdings totaled approximately 900 enslaved people and almost 30,000 acres of land by 1860.