WILLIAMSBURG — When Kurt Smith steps out onto a small second-floor balcony on July Fourth and looks out over a sea of people on Duke of Gloucester Street, he’ll be ready to give a speech he’s given dozens of times before.
For the past nine years, Smith has been portraying Thomas Jefferson at Colonial Williamsburg. Jefferson’s talents lie much more in the written word than in oration, but even as Smith speaks in a clear, booming voice for an audience of potentially thousands, Smith strives to capture Jefferson’s spirit — and a few laughs while he’s at it.
“(Comedian) George Carlin said, ‘I like to make people laugh because when their mouth is open, I can drop something in for them to chew on,’” Smith said. “I think of my treatment of Jefferson in somewhat of a similar way.”
People are often excited to hear the declaration, even in 2023, and especially on the Fourth of July, which Smith called “the coolest thing in the world.”
“If I get a few cheers from a rowdy group of people who’ve clearly just come from the tavern, then I will absolutely stop my reading to look at them and say something like, ‘That’s the spirit we need,’” he said.
Smith will be giving two readings of the Declaration of Independence on the same day that the country’s founding document was adopted in 1776. After nearly a decade as Jefferson, he’s given the same reading plenty of times before, but despite its familiarity, there’s always a new layer to be found.
“The cool thing about the Declaration of Independence is that it sort of refreshes itself,” Smith said. “In … the 27 grievances against the king and Parliament and our mother country, depending on the year, some of those grievances slide away into relegation and others, because of what we’re experiencing (currently), … slide right up to the top and you go, ‘Boy howdy, that feels just like today.’”
Williamsburg played a key role in the inception of the declaration, with Virginians originating the idea for a committee that would go on to be known as the Continental Congress.
“We call for that committee, that congress, to be created from the Raleigh Tavern in Williamsburg,” Smith said. “That is a massive undertaking… We wouldn’t have a Continental Congress had men in Williamsburg not met at a tavern to call for one. The most radical document to come out of the Continental Congress was … the Declaration of Independence.”
Seven Virginians, including Jefferson, were among the 56 delegates who signed the declaration, which was ratified on July 4, 1776, in Philadelphia. Jefferson was also among the five authors of the document, which famously states that certain truths are self-evident: “That all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
As Smith pointed out, those promises did not, at least initially, apply to everyone. He referenced an 1852 speech by Frederick Douglass in which Douglass asked, “What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelly to which he is the constant victim.”
“The declaration holds all of the promises that were delivered immediately. It also holds all the promises that were deferred and denied,” Smith said. To visit that document is to “revisit everything that is good and right and hopeful about this country as equally as it is to revisit everything that we got wrong.
“When you hear the Declaration of Independence in 2023, you are listening to America’s Promise, and if your ears are working, then you are engaging with those promises that were kept and those promises that have yet to be fully delivered on.”
Smith will read the declaration at 9:30 a.m. at Capitol Circle on Duke of Gloucester Street in Colonial Williamsburg and then again as part of the Lights of Freedom program on Palace Green in the evening. There is also a reading at noon at the Courthouse, which is done by another group of actor interpreters.
The readings are among the many activities planned for July Fourth in Colonial Williamsburg. A full schedule of the day’s events is available online at www.colonialwilliamsburg.org/explore/special-event/july-4/.
When Smith does the two readings, he will strive to “imbue it with a sense of urgency, of energy, of ‘What the heck are we doing?’
“There’s a bit of terror there, but also a great sense of hope,” he said.
Smith estimated that thousands of people come out every year for the reading, and the hope is that even more will be on hand, thanks to The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation offering free admission to the Historic Area and the Art Museums during the holiday. July Fourth is something of a yearly “Super Bowl” for Colonial Williamsburg, he said, when everyone shows up to see what the foundation has been working on throughout the year.
With his audience on Tuesday, he hopes to inspire people to stay engaged with what’s going on today.
The Declaration of Independence “is just a piece of paper with ink on it if we disbelieve it,” he continued. “So it’s up to us on the other 364 days of the year to engage, to listen, to read and to have these conversations even though they’re difficult.”
Sian Wilkerson, 757-342-6616, [email protected]
