Frederick Douglass

Narrative...

*Warning: Red text links to news story with images of a deceased human being.

We learn, in the biography on Douglass, that his father was a white man who took liberties with (and from) his black mother. It is guessed that his first "master" was his father, and one discovers through the narrative that this bought no favors but instead was a curse to any who happened to be born of the same circumstance. The narrative is full of such fascinating revelations. While I was horrified by the reality, I was impressed with new perspective, new dimensions of thought, however shaded.

The account of the "double relation" phenomenon brought immediately to mind an image of Senator William Hodges of Tallahassee's Goodwood Plantation. It is not perhaps widely known that Senator Hodges "administered to his own lusts" via the black women under his authority and fathered more than one child in this way.

Upon hearing this account and reflecting on the information that his wife (Margaret) had only one regret: childlessness (and assuming this meant she was unable to bear children) I looked out over the expanse from the back steps of the main house and visualized the presence of her husband's progeny on the grounds. It must have caused her some amount of quiet turmoil, but coming from nothing and wishing not to return, she was something of a "slave" to her own aspirations and William's "cunning arrangements".

The couple took up residence at Goodwood in 1925, so I'm not exactly sure of the capacity in which the black inhabitants served, but I'm fairly certain that white men availing themselves of certain possibly protected injustices was somewhat common practice. I have no idea what the social climate was during the 1925 era at Goodwood, so this is all surmising. Please, please if anyone knows more about Senator Hodges, his decendents or any related subject, do not hesitate to contact me as I am earnest in my interest and there seems to be little on the Web. I digress.

One thing the biography does not elucidate is the fact that, after the death of his first wife, the lovely Anna Murray (who was black), Douglass made a second wife of his former secretary Helen Pitts (who was white). Cleverly, he explained that his first marriage honored his mother's heritage while his second honored his father's.









Hot Mama Number One

Hot Mama Number Two

I was intrigued by our anthology's description of Mr. Douglass' voice and tried to find a recording but, unless I am mistaken, none exists. I was able however to uncover a copy of The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro. I found most poignant and stirring the words:

"Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the constitution and the Bible which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery, the great sin and shame of America! 'I will not equivocate; I will not excuse'; I will use the severest language I can command..."

Feeling this on deepest levels.

"But I fancy I hear some one of my audience say, 'It is just in this circumstance that you and your brother abolitionists fail to make a favorable impression on the public mind. Would you argue more, an denounce less; would you persuade more, and rebuke less; your cause would be much more likely to succeed.' But, I submit, where all is plain there is nothing to be argued. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light? Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it."

Strikes me as being particularly relevant today.

"When you can point to any such laws in reference to the beasts of the field, then I may consent to argue the manhood of the slave."

This made me think of contemporary laws we have enacted to protect beasts where we would not protect a living human being:

"Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? that he is the rightful owner of his own body?"

Used today against itself in all manner of twisted reasoning. Using God to support malevolence, using the right of one's body to dash away the body of another who magically has no right to himself... it is enough to plunge an individual into lunacy or else stir up the kind of impassioned eloquence that is so typical of one kind of abolitionist or another.

"You have already declared it. Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? Is that a question for Republicans? Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation, as a matter beset with great difficulty, involving a doubtful application of the principle of justice, hard to be understood? How should I look to-day, in the presence of Amercans, dividing, and subdividing a discourse, to show that men have a natural right to freedom? Speaking of it relatively and positively, negatively and affirmatively. To do so, would be to make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your understanding. There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven that does not know that slavery is wrong for him."

How these words reverberate! It is this exactly. Douglass gives "tongue to interesting thoughts of my own soul, which [have] frequently flashed through my mind" and wanted utterance. What I get from him is a "powerful vindication of human rights"; amen and amen.

"Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood, and stained with pollution, is wrong? No! I will not. I have better employment for my time and strength than such arguments would imply."

He argues by refusing to argue. Keen.

"What, then, remains to be argued? Is it that slavery is not divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? There is blasphemy in the thought. That which is inhuman, cannot be divine! Who can reason on such a proposition? They that can, may; I cannot."

And again and again; I could copy the text in its entirey and sing halleluiahs.

"The arm of the Lord is not shortened," and the doom of slavery is certain."

A shared hope.

"No nation can now shut itself up from the surrounding world and trot round in the same old path of its fathers without interference."

A slice of trepedation. This diverges from the collective eye of consciousness that is today blind. Unbelievably, in some ways the fight may have been easier in those times.

"The fiat of the Almighty, "Let there be Light," has not yet spent its force."

Tingling, tingling!

"That year will come, and freedom's reign,
To man his plundered rights again
Restore.
God speed the day when human blood
Shall cease to flow!"

I agree with Douglass' divine optimism regarding the U.S. Constitution, and I am sorry for the falling out between he and Garrison.
(HT: Our Professor)

Quickly, because I've gone on too long already...

I read all of what our book afforded and a little more, and I was impressed with a sense of the slave experience that I had not even considered, not for any prejudices on my own part, mind you, but for the sheer ignorance of never having been a slave myself. For instance, I was well aware that the teaching of reading and writing was forbidden a slave by law, and I knew that it was part of his fetter. However, I never considered it as fully dimensional as it truly was until Douglass' allusions to being a prisoner in his own mind. Illiteracy was a way of subduing or dulling victims of slavery; it kept them in a sort of mental vegetative state.

In addition to images of imposed incognizance, the necessary genius of overcoming it came to light in the form of manipulating young boys to a positive end. I was taken with such conversations between them as in "Have not I as good a right to be free as you have?" and "These words used to trouble them; they would express for me the liveliest sympathy, and console me with the hope that something would occur by which I might be free."
Train up a child in the way he should go...

Also, the account of the 6-day slave holiday floored me. I would have been drinking whisky and running races. Idiot! Douglass sorted it out for me. The deceitfulness of the "master" is sobering, while the perceptiveness of Douglass is inspiring. This is not enough. He also explains the drawbacks of being the "master's" child (as discussed above) and how shades of slavery spread themselves socially as in:

"Few are willing to incur the odium attaching to the reputation of being a cruel master; and above all things, they would not be known as not giving a slave enough to eat. Every city slaveholder is anxious to have it known of him, that he feeds his slaves well; and it is due to them to say, that most of them do give their slaves enough to eat."

In other words, refraining from starving another human being was motivated by selfishness. It was a way of keeping up appearances, of expressing one's own morality. This and more, including the sickest accounts of the "religious" element, including:

"For of all slaveholders with whom I have ever met, religious slaveholders are the worst. I have ever found them the meanest and basest, the most cruel and cowardly, of all others."

But we find that today. And yet Douglass says he is "almost" ready to question the benevolence of God. Let this be a lesson to us. Verily.

OK, this is not going swiftly; how can it? We're talking Douglass' Narrative...! A few more parallels (in the form of hyperlinks in the quotes) and let that be the end.

"In this dialogue, the whole argument in behalf of slavery was brought forward by the master, all of which was disposed of by the slave. The slave was made to say some very smart as well as impressive things in reply to his master..."

"...I feared them to be treacherous. White men have been known to encourage slaves to escape, and then, to get the reward, catch them and return them to their masters."

"...and by some means got the impression that he was laboring to effect the emancipation of all the slaves."

"...for just at that time, the slightest manifestation of humanity toward a colored person was denounced as abolitionism, and that name subjected its bearer to frightful liabilities. The watchwords of the bloody-minded in that region, and in those days, were, 'Damn the abolitionists!' and 'Damn the niggers!' There was nothing done, and probably nothing would have been done if I had been killed. Such was, and such remains, the state of things..."

I am spent, and I know all are spent who are reading, particularly those who support a plenary stripping of human rights based on appearance, ability and location.

But for my fellow contemporary abolitionists:
"...never from [your] chosen post,
Whate'er the peril or the cost,
Be driven. "

Visit Fred's home.

Visit Fred's grave.

Vist Fred's revamped grave.