Wayland HRDEI panel co-sponsors Frederick Douglass reading and Black golf history exhibit

WAYLAND — February 1, 2026 — Wayland's HRDEI Committee unanimously co-sponsors a Frederick Douglass reading and a Robert H. Hawkins exhibit. Chair Karen Blumenfeld rushed both 7-0 votes early in the Feb. 17 meeting to protect a thin vacation-week quorum, clearing the museum's Scarlet to pursue grant funding. The Douglass community reading of "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July" is tentatively set for June 30, co-sponsored with the Wayland Free Public Library; member Marianne Burkowski called the prior reading the seed of the committee's "Conversations for Change" series. The second program will mount a traveling display and lecture on Hawkins, who founded Mapledale in Stow — among the first Black-owned U.S. golf courses — after managing Wayland's Sandy Burr in the early 1920s. The next "Conversations Not Confrontations" session, led by facilitator Jamil Adams, is March 10 at First Parish; about 40 attended the snow-hit opener. The committee meets March 17 to mark its fifth anniversary.