The community is invited to gather on the North Andover Common at 11:00 a.m. on Friday, July 4, for the 6th annual Independence Day Recitation Event, hosted by the Friends of the 1836 Meeting House.
The event centers on a public reading of the Declaration of Independence, a tradition carried on by state Senators Bruce Tarr and Barry Finegold, along with state Rep. Tram Nguyen. This year’s program will also feature students from the North Andover Middle School Civics in Action class, who will read the Bill of Rights and provide brief summaries of each amendment.
In addition to these founding documents, the program will include excerpts from several historic American speeches. Judy Eskin of Greater Andover Indivisible will read from William Jennings Bryan’s Imperialism speech, Pastor Lyndon Myers of Andover Baptist Church will deliver a portion of Frederick Douglass’s The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro, and Ralph Bledsoe of the North Andover African American History Committee will read from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s I Have a Dream speech.
Music will also be part of the program. Local group Rockwood Taylor will perform a medley of “I Hear Them All” and “This Land Is Your Land,” and the Choral Majority will debut an original piece titled United in America. Joanna Kerr, director of the North Andover Historical Society, will serve as narrator.
The event is free and open to all ages. In the event of rain, the celebration will move indoors to the 1836 Meeting House at North Parish Church on the Common.
Sponsors for the program include the Friends of the 1836 Meeting House, the North Andover Historical Society, the North Andover Festival Committee, and Mass Humanities, with support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.
More information is available at www.1836meetinghouse.org.