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SUMMARY:'What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?': Discussion Featuring Eminent Historians Edna Greene Medford\, Kay Wright Lewis\, and John Muller
DESCRIPTION:In-person Register Here“I answer: a day that reveals to him\, more than all other days in the year\, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.” \n– Frederick Douglass\n\n\n \n\n\nThis discussion is part of Hill Center’s Benjamin Drummond Emancipation Day Celebration Series\n\n  \n\n\n\nIn 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 John Muller\, and Howard University professor\, Kay Wright Lewis. They will examine the speech and its historical relevance. \nDr. 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\, is scheduled for release in February 2027. \n  \n  \nDr. Kay Wright Lewis is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at Howard University\, where she formerly held the position of Undergraduate Director\, and served as Interim Chair of the Department. Lewis received her BA from Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville\, NY\, and she completed her PhD in the department of history at Rutgers University\, New Brunswick in 2011. Her research focuses on slavery and resistance\, African and African American intellectual history\, and the history of violence. As a graduate student\, Lewis held an Andrew W. Mellon Competitive Dissertation Fellowship at Rutgers University. After graduation\, she was a Fellow at the Gilder Lehrman Center at Yale University in 2011\, and Lewis’ dissertation was one of the finalists in the Southern Historical Association’s C. Vann Woodward Dissertation Prize competition. She was the recipient of a Mellon Scholars Short-term Fellowship from the Library Company of Philadelphia\, and a Short-term Fellowship from the Lapidus Center for the Historical Analysis of Transatlantic Slavery at the Schomburg Center for Research in New York City\, NY. \nJohn 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.
URL:https://www.hillcenterdc.org/event/what-to-the-slave-is-the-fourth-of-july-discussion-featuring-eminent-historians-edna-greene-medford-and-john-muller/
LOCATION:Hill Center DC\, 921 Pennsylvania Avenue\, SE\, Washington\, DC\, 20003\, United States
CATEGORIES:In-person Events,Lectures & Conversations
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.hillcenterdc.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Frederick_Douglass_circa_1879_cropped.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="Benjamin Drummond Emancipation Day Celebration":MAILTO:BenjaminDrummond@hillcenterdc.org
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