📺 Forthcoming history, passion, and purpose. Regram from @museumofeveryone: COMING SOON Amanda Nyoni will be speaking to writer and activist Clara Rose Thornton about Douglass Week, a week of events around Ireland that commemorate Frederick Douglass’s journey and visit to Ireland in the 19th century. In the autumn of 1845, a young and charismatic African-American abolitionist sailed from America to Ireland for a four-month lecture tour of the island. Frederick Douglass had been born into slavery but escaped bondage on a plantation in Maryland by fleeing to the North, where he became a prominent anti-slavery activist. Douglass lectured to large and enthusiastic audiences, met with Daniel O’Connell, and reflected upon the devastating effects of the famine then beginning to sweep the nation. #DouglassWeek programming highlights the experience of Douglass and other abolitionists and explores issues like identity, migration and race in contemporary Ireland. It emphasizes the continued importance of remembering slavery and the intertwined struggle for independence and liberation in Ireland and the US. Clara Rose Thornton is an award-winning essayist, multiple slam poetry champion, culture journalist, educator, and activist from Chicago. In the six countries in which she has lived, she has given speeches of sociopolitical import in a multitude of governmental and historical venues, performed thunderous spoken word poetry both musical and a cappella, and has worked with organizations and individuals to manifest several progressive firsts, including the inaugural Black History Month Ireland in 2014. While living in Ireland for six years, she won the Dublin Slam Poetry Championship three years in a row. She was a frequent RTE radio and television broadcaster, and wrote for the The Irish Independent and Irish Times. Now repatriated to her home city, where she focuses on education and the Black Lives Matter movement, Clara Rose maintains close ties with Ireland through artistic and sociopolitical work. https://www.instagram.com/p/CLKTSQ3n62C/?igshid=95bdafj0hvss
