The words of Frederick Douglass rang out from the Federated Church in Edgartown Tuesday, as readers recited the abolitionist orator’s famous speech.

The Federated Church will host a reading of Frederick Douglass’s powerful speech The Meaning of Fourth of July to the Negro.

Frederick Douglas, the colored orator, addressed a very respectable, though not large audience, at the Town Hall, on Saturday evening last, on the Unity of the Races. His arguments in favor of a common origin of mankind were very logical, and doubtless deemed conclusive by the great majority of his hearers. He is a fluent and powerful speaker, and commands uninterrupted attention.