The Fourth of July is about all things American: parades, cookouts, cold beer and, of course, fireworks. Those pyrotechnics remain at the center of Independence Day, a holiday 247 years in the making. Massive fireworks lit up the skyline of multiple American cities, marking festivities across the country.

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In Greater Boston, the Fourth of July includes a number of annual traditions: music at the Hatch Shell, the presentation of the Declaration of Independence, and the reading of Frederick Douglass’s speech “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?