In December 1857 Oak Bluffs was technically still a part of Edgartown when Frederick Douglass, the acclaimed abolitionist and former slave, spoke at the Federated Church, memorialized in a story in the Vineyard Gazette. Every year on the Fourth of July the church invites folks to read his famous speech, The Meaning of the Fourth of July for the Negro. A summation of that speech in Douglass’s words is, “What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? 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.”

On the eve of Black History Month next week it is appropriate to acknowledge some of the many other abolitionists of Oak Bluffs. Hebron Vincent, one of the 1835 founders of the Camp Meeting Association, was a leading abolitionist who wrote a piece called A Vindication of the African Race that I believe is ensconced in the Martha’s Vineyard Museum library. His co-founder, Jeremiah Pease, was of like mind and his diaries recount many of the kind services he rendered to Oak Bluffs’ black people. Ebenezer G. Lamson, who built the Kedron Meadow home in Bellevue Heights, manufactured weapons used by the Union in the Civil War and was, like his neighbor Ichabod Norton Luce, an abolitionist. Luce had an even greater claim to fame as a boat builder who was friends with Frederick Douglass, a caulker at the time, in Mattapoisett. Douglass initially presented his first Vineyard speech to a group of white women and addressed the nation’s values of freedom, Christianity and economic opportunity. Robert Morris Copeland, who designed most of our historic district, was another abolitionist who was dismissed from the Union Army after he tried to build a training site for a black regiment. Like Douglass, Copeland recognized that women’s rights and slavery in the 1800s were human issues and was an avid supporter of women’s rights. Judging from last Saturday’s astoundingly successful Women’s March on Washington that proliferated all over the world that need, while still great, is far better recognized.

Support the Oak Bluffs School eighth grade class trip to Philadelphia by attending a family dance party at the school on Friday, Jan. 27 from 6 to 8 p.m. that includes games, a bake sale and live music by Serendipity. Tickets are $20 per family or $10 per adult and $5 for kids. Students must be accompanied by an adult.

This Saturday the Portuguese-American Club hosts a fundraiser for the MV Sharks and Vineyard Baseball with a fun evening of comedy, music, a silent auction and a 50/50 raffle. The event is $25 and features the comedy of Carolyn Plummer and Tony V. and the music of Johnny Hoy and the Bluefish. Hors d’oeuvres will be served, doors open at 7 p.m. and the show starts at 8. Unlike yard sales, to encourage early birds the first 100 people attending will be entered into a drawing for a prize valued at over $300.

The town hall building committee has scheduled two open houses for Oak Bluffs residents, voters and friends. The first is next Wednesday, Feb. 1 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the town hall conference room. There will be documents, sketches and photos of the plans and for the physically able, a self-guided walking tour of town hall spaces, some not normally open to the public. Not all of our hand-me-down town hall is handicapped accessible. For another reason why a new town hall is needed, please use the restroom while you’re there. Light refreshments are included, and there will be another open house at the new fire and safety building March 1.

There’s another popular Dine To Donate at Offshore Ale on Thursday, Feb. 2 for lunch, dinner and take out to raise funds for Vineyard Power. There will be a silent auction for a bunch of cool and useful things.

Groundhog Day is next Thursday, Feb. 2 and at the library from 3 to 4:30 p.m. kids three and older can make a groundhog that pops up from the ground. Hey, OB library – time to update that website.

It’s coincidental that Linda Jean’s is closed for a long awaited break just as IHOP is advertising all you can eat pancakes. It’s ironic that this is the first time in a long while I’ve wanted to go off-Island.

Keep your foot on a rock.

Send Oak Bluffs news to sfinley@mvgazette.com.