Frederick Douglass (1818?-1895) was the top Black American leader of the 1800s. He was arguably the greatest public speaker of the English-speaking world in a time when public speaking was hugely important – and he spoke up for Blacks! He thundered against the injustices of American society, from slavery to racial inequality to lynching. He did not equivocate, he did not excuse. He did not soften his words to comfort the comfortable.
As a slave in Maryland, his master did not want him to learn how to read or write – so he knew it must be a good thing! He learned how in secret. In 1838 he ran away, along the Underground Railroad. He would later become a station master, helping slaves escape to Canada.
In the 1840s he became the leading Black voice of the abolitionist movement to end slavery. Even though the backbone of the movement was Black, the leadership had been White.
In 1847 Douglass started his own abolitionist newspaper, The North Star, named after the star runaway slaves followed to freedom. He went from town to town across the North speaking out against slavery. Most Whites in the North supported slavery, even most religious leaders! He helped to turn public opinion, providing the kindling for what would become the Civil War.
The spark came in 1859 when John Brown led a failed slave uprising at Harpers Ferry. Brown asked Douglass to lead it, but Douglass thought it had little chance of success.
During the Civil War (1861-1865), Douglass helped to persuade President Lincoln to use Black soldiers – a move that Lincoln later said saved the North from defeat. Douglass helped to raise the 54th and 55th Massachusetts Regiments. (The 54th was the one in the Denzel Washington film, “Glory” (1989)).
Douglass also helped to persuade Lincoln not to send freed slaves back to Africa!
After the war, with the slaves freed, Douglass pushed to give Blacks equal protection under the law and the vote. That became the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution.
By the 1880s he saw the beginnings of the Nadir of American race relations: Jim Crow, slavery by another name, lynching, the rise of scientific racism, the romanticization of the old South, etc. He thought it would not last long: education, economics and good White people would not let it.
In our time he is best known for:
- “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave” (1845), which shows how slavery dehumanized both Blacks and Whites, how Christianity made slave masters worse, not better!
- “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” (1852). Quote:
Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.
– Abagond, 2014.
See also:
- speeches:
- American slavery
- American abolitionists
- Back to Africa
- The Nadir of American race relations
- Anacostia – the part of DC where he lived in his later years
- The Black counter-frame – his writings are an early expression of it
- Black History Month – he is half the reason it is in February
- white father, black mother – his father was an unknown White man
- What they do not teach you about anti-racism at American high school
Wow! Though I was always made aware of Frederick Douglass’ pleas to end slavery, his influence about employing Black soldiers, not sending them back to Africa, etc. is something that I did not find out in great depth until much, much later in life, good post Abagond!
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I prefer Booker T Washington:
Abagond will say he doesn’t get paid for this blog. Perhaps not. But Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and even Tim Wise have made very good livings from racial agitation. And their racial agitation has found fertile soil in the minds of Abagond and his cronies. In short, you all have drunk their kool-aid. How sweet it must taste after having drank the bitter wine of your own shortcomings.
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Looks like the narcissist spoke again. It is almost sad how he has to project on almost every thread. I hope he will soon be able to deal with his ‘bitterness” and obvious “shortcomings.” 🙂
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@Kiwi
It was interesting to find that many white women who owned slaves thought the slaves were happy. They thought they wanted to be slaves and that they were doing a good deed for them.
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Frederick Douglass is definitely a hero of mine. I remember reading the book Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass- an American Slave in high school. Such tenacity and brilliance (i.e. how he learn to read and write.) No excuse for me not to excel in academics. We have such great reminders from our history.
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[…] "Frederick Douglass (1818?-1895) was the top Black American leader of the 1800s. He was arguably the greatest public speaker of the English-speaking world in a time when public speaking was hugely important – and he spoke up for Blacks! He thundered against the injustices of American society, from slavery to racial inequality to lynching. He did not equivocate, he did not excuse. He did not soften his words to comfort the comfortable." […]
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Great post. He got a lot done.
Douglass got to live a full span too, which was an achievement in itself for someone who put his head above the parapet so conspicuously.
He’d be an excellent subject for a biopic movie.
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Not to trivialize Frederick Douglass, but the man had some bad a** hair. The classic picture of him while his hair was still dark but with the one white shock, well that guy could bring the thunder!
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Thanks, and Douglass died a relatively wealthy man…a good example for all of us that no matter how you were born, you can still rise above it.
And kudos to Abagond for writing about a real abolitionist instead of a fantastical one like Abraham Lincoln.
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Intelligence. He knew how to survive and use his head.
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How sweet it must taste after having drank the bitter wine of your own shortcomings.
Yes, but it evokes comical responses from you! Being a bunch of dumb coloureds, why even bother with us? what are your goals in this endeavour? Carry on!
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Douglass had quite a number of impressive accomplishments from a man who was once a former slave. He is quite a note worthy historical figure, who should be acknowledged in American history books as well as Black American learning about his accomplishments.
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@Kiwi
In defense not of Anglos but of history, Douglas would STRONGLY disagree with your rebuke of all Anglos. He understood and was motivated and protected by his knowledge that ‘White’ abolitionists had struggled to secure his freedom and his humanity. This is not speculation since his writings and speeches are there for all to read. He would be sorely insulted by the idea that he was simply an advocate for American Blacks; he was a global revolutionary for human rights, an adviser to Lincoln, an agitator for humanism in American foreign policy, and a feminist.
All of us familiar with American history know full well that the American Civil War was not fought ‘to end slavery’ but to enforce the fledgling industrial revolution and the early corporate powers of the northern American economic base, whose capitalists sought to overturn the powerful southern agrarian base of America’s economy (a base driven by the engine of slave labor); and that Lincoln, by his OWN WORDS was NOT motivated by the desire to end slavery but rather to ‘save the union’.
Still though, America, and Black Americans too, idealize, mythologize, and make up kiddie stories about American history and about Black historical figures such as Douglass, Mary Bethune, Sojourner Truth, William Trotter, Harriet Tubman, and all the rest of the towering Black intellectuals and revolutionaries of the 1800’s. These people, especially Douglass, were NOT segregated in their thoughts OR their actions–they were revolutionaries forged and annealed in the fires of slavery who struggled to freedom, regarding themselves as AMERICAN CITIZENS, as subjects of democracy, carrying a nation of African slaves and then of former African slaves on their backs (Tubman in particular, LITERALLY carried Black slaves through the forests and and fields, across the rivers and bogs of The South on the underground railroad returning repeatedly to The South after her own escape from slavery to rescue Blacks, with a steep bounty on her head as a criminal subject to death at the hands of ‘The Planters Leagues’ of White slave masters in The South, and under the threat of the ‘Fugitive Slave Act’ even in The North). These men and women lived and loudly proclaimed a vision of national reform and national transformation, and addressed through their speeches, in the newspapers and newsletters they founded, and in the books they published, the issues and the future of ALL Americans.
Douglass by the way worked extensively with American Anglos who shared his values of democracy, equality, and multi-ethnic rights. We should not blithely dismiss the fact that ‘Whites’ (I say Anglos) supported, fed, and housed the newly escaped Fred Douglass, and even guarded him in public when he spoke and protected him from the threat of slave catchers prowling The North to collect the bounty southern planters had put on his head. Douglass was not a little bobble head cartoon of limited essence as most of our Black historical figures are portrayed to us by the travesty of ‘Black History Month’ (thank God it’s only 28 days long!). Douglass knew full well that it was a huge contingent of Anglo women in the north who had peopled the abolitionist movement, and he recognized their political significance and their moral force. He agitated not just for Black rights but for Native rights, for and women’s rights (he was for a few years after the Civil War the most popular speaker in the nation when the issue was women’s suffrage–he considered himself a ‘male suffragist’). He was much like William Trotter from his time, and Martin King who came after him: although his first loyalty was to former Black slaves, to his own people, he was a force for HUMAN rights in the nation and in the world.
He served as the US ambassador to the nation of Haiti from 1889 to 1891, and had an internationalist perspective, had international values, and a decidedly internationalist analysis of America and of the world surrounding America. We must not forget that Douglass was not a ‘lawn jockey’ (what I call the mythic shrinking of Black leaders, politicians, and intellectuals when we encounter them in American history books–as hood ornaments and sock puppets, cartoon figures with tiny raised fists and membership in Christian churches). No, Douglass was a product of his times–Karl Marx lived from 1818 to 1883 as a contemporary of Douglass’ (Douglass was by the way well read in European literature and philosophy even before he escaped from slavery–as is detailed in his autobiography). Marx’s monumental work of socialist-humanist thought, Das Kapital–“Capital”–was published in 1867! The American Civil War was fought from 1861 to 1865. The Emancipation Proclamation was issued by President Lincoln as an executive action in 1863. That other giant of African American internationalist thought, W.E.B. Dubois was born in 1868. Douglass was born sometime between 1847 and 1853.
We can see, if we look away from the lawn jockey image, that Douglass was a towering American and international leader, philosopher, public speaker, politician, and writer, not just a stiff picture on a Black history calender.
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“We can see, if we look away from the lawn jockey image, that Douglass was a towering American and international leader, philosopher, public speaker, politician, and writer, not just a stiff picture on a Black history calender.”
Nice post! I think you just about summed it up.
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@biggiefriez
Appreciated. Though I misspelled ‘calendar’, which Douglass would fuss at me for doing.
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Sorry, had no access to wordpress in the past few days. Glad to see a post finally on this topic.
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Reblogged this on revealingartisticthoughts.
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“There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.”
Ah, there is something to that. Finkelstein complains of the same thing with Jews (holocaust industry); there’s never a shortage of people with “an angle”.
But Herneith is correct. It’s nonsensical for Jokah to post this.
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Douglass also became a US representative in Haiti and defended Haiti’s legacy for people of African descent
http://www2.webster.edu/~corbetre/haiti/history/1844-1915/douglass.htm
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Found a driving tour to learn about Frederick Douglass’s life in Maryland and Washington, DC
https://www.visitmaryland.org/driving-tours/following-his-footsteps-marylands-frederick-douglass-driving-tour
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Reblogged this on Project ENGAGE.
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