Interpreting Frederick Douglass
In a divided age, Nathan Richardson’s message resonates more than ever
Join us Monday, November 17, at the Saratoga Springs Holiday Inn for the monthly public dinner hosted by the Saratoga Torch Club. Dinner begins at 6 p.m., followed at 7 p.m. by Nathan Richardson’s acclaimed interpretation of Frederick Douglass.
The atmosphere in any room changes the moment Richardson steps to the podium. Whether it’s a community center in Schuylerville, a school auditorium in Baltimore, or the ballroom of a historic mansion, the effect is the same. The crowd grows still. A presence fills the space.
It is not Nathan Richardson, the modern Virginia poet, who holds the audience’s attention, but the towering spirit of Frederick Douglass himself. Shoulders squared, gaze steady, and voice resonant with conviction, Richardson doesn’t merely portray Douglass—he channels him. Through his commanding baritone and measured cadence, the great abolitionist’s words seem newly alive, urgent once more.
For 13 years, Richardson has carried this mantle. A native of Suffolk, Virginia, and a 22-year U.S. Army veteran, he has become one of the nation’s most compelling historical interpreters. His goal, as he often says, is not to reenact history but to embody it—to bridge past and present in a conversation that still demands to be heard.
From Suffolk Storyteller to Historical Interpreter
Richardson’s own story begins far from the lecture circuit, in the rural Buckhorn farming community of Suffolk, Virginia. His first education came not from books but from the oral traditions that shaped his family life.
“I was that kid that loved the stories of the farmers,” he recalls. “My father, all my family members—they were storytellers. And liars,” he adds with a laugh. “That’s how I learned: truth and performance, woven together.”
This narrative inheritance ran deep. On his father’s side, Richardson descends from the Haliwa-Saponi, a Native American people who migrated from North Carolina to Virginia in the 1930s, carrying with them traditions of oral artistry. His paternal grandfather was a poet. On his mother’s side, the Hollimans of South Hampton County embodied the tragic complexity of the South: a lineage of enslaved people and the white slave masters who owned them.
The interwoven strands of Indigenous, African, and European ancestry gave Richardson a direct connection to the contradictions of American history. “Those coalitions—Native, Irish, Black—formed to survive,” he says. “It taught me how identities overlap, how history itself is complicated.”
After high school, Richardson enlisted in the U.S. Army, serving for 22 years. Stationed abroad in Germany, he began to write poetry as a way to “reconnect with what’s born.” Words became a lifeline, a means of holding together memory, duty, and self. When he retired, poetry blossomed into a second career. He published collections like Likeness of Being and, later, The 7 Last Poems of an Unarmed Citizen, a searing response to racial injustice.
But history had another plan for him.
“Douglass Found Me”
The pivot came at a poetry event when fellow storyteller Sheila Arnold approached him with an idea: why not try historical interpretation? Richardson brushed it off at first. “It’s not that I didn’t like history,” he remembers. “I just didn’t see myself doing history.”
Still, he began exploring figures—W.E.B. Du Bois, Booker T. Washington—before landing on the writings of Frederick Douglass. Something electric happened.
“I could literally hear his voice,” Richardson says. “His rhythm. His cadence. It was like music to a poet’s ear.”
The more he read, the stronger the pull became. Douglass, too, was largely self-taught, driven by a hunger for knowledge outside formal institutions. His voice—rich, deliberate, lyrical—felt familiar. “Pretty soon I realized,” Richardson reflects, “Douglass probably found me. Everything I’d done up to that point had set me up to be a pretty good Douglass.”
He immersed himself in research, not to mimic, but to embody. Today, he carries in his repertoire 13 major Douglass speeches—among them “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” and the orations on the Dred Scott decision and the First Amendment. He delivers contextualized versions, blending verbatim passages with explanation, and then invites the audience to ask Douglass anything they wish.
That’s the difference, Richardson insists, between reenactment and interpretation. “A reenactor picks a period or event and sticks to the script,” he says. “An interpreter can talk about anything—the person’s friends, the price of goods, the politics of the time. You become the person. And when the audience asks questions, Douglass answers.”
The Four Boxes of Freedom
Among the ideas Richardson brings forward from Douglass’s writings, few resonate more powerfully with modern audiences than the abolitionist’s metaphor of the “four boxes of the body politic.”
“Douglass said that our freedoms lie in four boxes,” Richardson explains. “The soap box, the jury box, the ballot box, and the cartridge box.”
The soap box represented the First Amendment—the right to speak freely and agitate. The jury box symbolized fair trial and justice. The ballot box embodied the sacred duty of voting. And the cartridge box, the most sobering, acknowledged that when all else fails, people have historically defended liberty by force.
Richardson uses this framework to critique today’s civic malaise. “We’re out of balance,” he says. “Too many Americans are leaning on just one box—whether it’s free speech, or guns, or voting—while ignoring the others. That’s how democracy fails.”
He reminds audiences that the Civil War itself erupted when the first three boxes were ignored, leaving only the fourth. “It’s a warning,” he cautions. “If we neglect speech, justice, and the vote, violence will come.”
The lesson, he insists, is not despair but responsibility. “Read the Constitution for yourself. Don’t depend on others to tell you what it means. Democracy only works if we engage with it fully.”
The Poet’s Mission
Beyond Douglass, Richardson has spent decades mentoring youth. Through groups like Teens With a Purpose, he has coached young poets to national competitions, run programs in juvenile detention centers, and built platforms like the Poetry, Prose & Pizza open mic series.
But Douglass has become his central calling. The “Frederick Douglass Speaking Tour” has carried him to more than 500 performances, earning recognition as a Chautauqua Scholar. His forthcoming memoir, Becoming Douglass, promises to reflect on the journey.
“Mr. Douglass would be disappointed with America today,” he says bluntly. “We’ve allowed detachment from the Constitution. We’ve let celebrity replace civic understanding. But his legacy—the amendments that came out of Reconstruction—still guide us.”
In Columbia, Maryland, where Richardson now resides, audiences sometimes joke that Douglass has returned to live among them. The comparison is not entirely fanciful. Watching Richardson, it is easy to believe the prophet of freedom has indeed stepped back into the world, calling Americans once more to account.
