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After recently saving the Freedmen’s Monument from threat of being “burned” by a foul-mouthed Harvard underclassman, Nathan Richardson will return Friday to Lincoln Park in D.C. as Frederick Douglass in a presentation of excerpts from “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?,” a speech Douglass gave in 1852 at an Independence Day celebration in New York.
The event, which begins at 6:30 p.m., will offer a historical view of Douglass and Abraham Lincoln, including meetings of the two in 1863 and 1864 in the White House, their interaction in March 1865 during Lincoln’s second inauguration, stories of the friendship of Douglass and Elizabeth Keckley, as well as portions of Douglass’ 1876 speech at the unveiling of the Freedmen’s Monument and the friendship of Douglass and Robert Todd Lincoln.
Richardson, who teaches a variety of workshops for emerging writers, is a published author, performance poet and Douglass hjistorian. He is now in the sixth year of the Frederick Douglass Speaking Tour, in which he portrays the former slave, writer, orator and abolitionist.