Former ‘Daily Show’ comedian performs famous Frederick Douglass speech at Brooklyn Public Library
While many New Yorkers were stuck in Fourth of July traffic on Friday, numerous Brooklynites gathered at the Brooklyn Public Library’s Central branch at Grand Army Plaza to watch the former “Daily Show” comedian and New York Times best-selling author Baratunde Thurston deliver a hysterical and enlightening rendition of Frederick Douglass’ speech “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”
Douglass was an African-American orator, writer and statesman, who, after escaping slavery in Maryland, became a renowned abolitionist. He was famous for his eloquent anti-slavery lectures that entranced audiences.
In Willard B. Gatewood Jr.’s essay review “Frederick Douglass and the Building of a ‘Wall of Anti-Slavery Fire, 1845-1846” Gatewood describes Douglass as a man “endowed with a near photographic memory, an expressive face, and a rich voice capable of great range in intonation and pitch, he utterly commanded any platform and invariably spoke in direct and unadorned language…