Stages of Freedom & Newport’s Redwood Library Frederick Douglass benefit event

Stages of Freedom is hosting a benefit lecture and reception – Frederick Douglass – What he continues to teach us – with Dr. David Blight.

Pulitzer Prize winner and Yale professor Dr. David Blight, America’s foremost authority on Frederick Douglass, will speak Thursday, August 18^th at 4:30pm at the Redwood Library and Athenaeum, 50 Bellevue Avenue, Newport. Blight will discuss what Douglass has to teach us in the current racial and political climate.

The talk and reception are part of the Redwood’s 175^th anniversary celebration and support Stages of Freedom’s groundbreaking Swim Empowerment program, teaching Black Rhode Island youth how to swim in order to save lives in a year in which drownings have increased.

Dr. David Blight is author of the award-winning Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom (soon to be a major motion picture). He’s America’s foremost Douglass scholar, and the Sterling Professor of History, African American Studies, and Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University.

Tickets are $100 for the Lecture, Reception & complimentary one-year Redwood Library membership – or, $40 for Lecture and Reception only. Proceeds benefit Stages of Freedom’s Swim Empowerment program for Rhode Island black youth.

For more information, contact: Ray Rickman (401) 316-4819. More info on Swim Empowerment & Stages of Freedom here: https://www.stagesoffreedom.org/swimempowerment