In annual Frederick Douglass reading, students find motivation

When Manuel Sequeira stepped up to the podium in 2006 to read at his first Frederick Douglass Read-athon, he was nervous, shaking and had practiced a lot.

“I was only seven,” recalled the Greater New Bedford Regional Vocational Technical High School freshman, now 14. “I didn’t know what to expect. I thought I was going to mess up.”

Sequeira, who was born in Portugal and was introduced to the reading through a program at the Harbour House Family Shelter, has come a long way since then.

And that, he said, is precisely the point. read full story