‘What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?’: Discussion Featuring Eminent Historians Edna Greene Medford and John Muller

In April 2015, the Benjamin Drummond Emancipation Day Celebration Series launched with a series of programs that considered Ta-Nehisi Coates’ question, “Why Do So Few Blacks Study the Civil War?” Eleven years later, as we recognize the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the 250th Anniversary of the birth of the United States of America, we will grapple with abolitionist and orator Frederick Douglass’ question, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” Moderated by historian and Abraham Lincoln scholar Dr. Edna Greene Medford who will be in conversation with Douglass scholar Dr. John Muller, we will discuss the speech, its historical relevance, how we can apply that same question to other marginalized groups, and situate those words in this contemporary moment.

Edna Greene Medford is Professor of History Emerita and former Associate Provost for Faculty Affairs at Howard University. She is currently the chairperson and the immediate past president of the Abraham Lincoln Institute, a nonprofit organization that promotes scholarship on the life, times, and legacy of Abraham Lincoln. She is the author of Lincoln and Emancipation and a co-author of The Emancipation Proclamation: Three Views. Her most recent book (co-authored), They Accepted Kicks from No One: An American Family’s Multigenerational Pursuit of Freedom, Equality, and Social Justice, isscheduled for release in February 2027.

John Muller is the author of Frederick Douglass in Washington, D.C.: The Lion of Anacostia (2012), Mark Twain in Washington, D.C: The Adventures of a Capital Correspondent (2013) and the forthcoming Frederick Douglass in Western Maryland. He has presented throughout the Washington and Baltimore metropolitan area at venues including Library of Congress, Capitol Hill Books, Enoch Pratt Free Library, Frederick Douglass National Historic Site, DC Public Library, Politics & Prose Bookstore, Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum, Harriet Tubman Museum and Education Center on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, American Library in Paris, Susan B. Anthony House in Rochester, New York and the Hill Center. John has been featured on C-SPAN’s Book TV, C-SPAN’s American History TV and on television and radio in DC and Baltimore discussing Frederick Douglass.