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photos from google images under the search "Fredrick Douglass"

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WASHINGTON - Maya Angelou always makes me cry. She also makes me laugh, of course, and sing and think and feel. But the one certainty is that her every performance - be it at lecture hall, poetry reading, dinner table or presidential inaugural - will at some point make me cry.

She did it again on Feb. 15, with readings from her work and others' at a Frederick Douglass birthday celebration.

There's no point in trying to recreate for you the words that evoked my tears this time. It cannot be done. An Angelou performance is such a blend of words, delivery, acting and feeling - so much involved with her whole being - that to try to tell someone else about it is like trying to summarize love.

Besides, I don't want to talk about Angelou. I want to talk about Douglass - about his hard life, his determination, his success and, most of all, his dreams.

It's a talk my wife and I often have. We'll be driving along an inner-city street and happen past a group of rowdy teen-agers, or a blond-wigged prostitute, or some derelict talking to himself, and one of us will say: ''What would Frederick Douglass say if he saw that?''

Last week's program, at Ford's Theater, had me thinking those thoughts again. Douglass, born into slavery, made his mark as gifted orator and committed abolitionist. He lived long enough to see the end of slavery. But he knew, his own uncommon success notwithstanding, that abolition alone would not ensure justice.

''Though slavery was abolished,'' he sadly declared after the Civil War, ''the wrongs perpetrated against my people were not ended.'' That unfinished business became his new mission, and by the time of his death, 98 years ago last week, he had reason to be hopeful - not just for himself but for his people.

What would Frederick Douglass say . . . now? Wouldn't he be overjoyed to see college-attendance rates for blacks approaching those of whites? Wouldn't he smile in satisfaction to see the growth of the black middle class, in affluence and influence? Wouldn't he delight in knowing that the top military man in America is Colin Powell, a black man, or that another black man, the late Reginald Lewis, could put together an international conglomerate capable of doing $1.5 billion in annual sales? Might he not marvel at the idea that the 15th Amendment, which guaranteed blacks the right to vote, had by now produced an estimated 8,000 black elected officials across America? Or that three of his people now sit in the Cabinet of the president of the United States?

Don't you think he might find delightful irony in recalling the words of his old slavemaster, that ''learning would spoil the best nigger in the world''? He might be moved to say: Thanks for the advice; my people have learned, and now they are no longer fit to be niggers.

But, of course, we would have to tell him the bad news, too. I think he might, on hearing that black people were disproportionately implicit in criminal activity, swallow hard and try to understand. Didn't he say, more than a century ago, that ''where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where one class is made to feel that society is organized in a conspiracy to oppress, rob, and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe''?

What would Frederick Douglass say if you seated him in the parlor of the Executive Mansion in Virginia - Virginia! - and bade him sit while you fetched the governor, and then you walked in with Doug Wilder?

And suppose you sat there and told him of the progress, individual and societal, we've made in extending opportunity to the descendants of slaves. Suppose you told this man, who had to risk severe punishment for daring to learn to read, that education is now not just free but mandatory; that books are plentiful and can be borrowed at no cost from public libraries; that educators, civil rights leaders, the government and private industry are co-conspirators in a scheme to get our children to learn.

Suppose you ticked off the academic and political accomplishments of the grandchildren of slaves, even while informing him that there were still in America those who were indifferent, even hostile, to the advancement of his people.

Could he suppress his delight?

And then suppose you put him into the governor's limousine and drove him through the slums of Richmond, or Washington or Los Angeles and let him see what my wife and I have seen too many times: the aimless drifters, the homeless in their cardboard shelters, the bullet-riddled walls, the vandalized schools, the pitifully undereducated children, the drug dealers and their prey.

What would Frederick Douglass say?

I think he would say nothing at all. I think that, with no need for an assist from the brilliant Maya Angelou, Frederick Douglass would simply cry.

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What Would Frederick Douglass Say If He Were Alive Today . . . ?

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WASHINGTON - Maya Angelou always makes me cry. She also makes me laugh, of course, and sing and think and feel. But the one certainty is that her every performance - be it at lecture hall, poetry reading, dinner table or presidential inaugural - will at some point make me cry.

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https://www.notablebiographies.com/De-Du/Douglass-Frederick.html#ixzz5XRy1FFrR

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his mom was a slave named Harriet Bailey. She named her son Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey. He never knew or saw his father.

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https://www.quora.com/How-did-Frederick-Douglass-escape-from-slavery

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He disguised himself as a sailor and took the train north. He put on a sailor's cap, a red shirt and a black scarf which was what sailors wore in that area at that time.   Because many freemen worked as sailors, it was a persuasive disguise. He was helped by a few things.  he didn't have papers that freemen were required to have, but he had a forged Seamen's Certificate, of the kind that a sailor would have if they traveled to a foreign port and needed to prove they were an American.  Also the conductor didn't study the certificate too well, because he did not match the description on them.

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Abolitionist-

1. a person who favors the abolition of a practice or institution, especially capital punishment or (formerly) slavery.

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Speeches

"The Church and Prejudice"

Self-Made Men

The Hypocrisy of American Slavery, 1852

"Speech at National Hall, Philadelphia July 6, 1863 for the Promotion of Colored Enlistments"[145]

"What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?"[146]

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Writings

A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845)

"The Heroic Slave". Autographs for Freedom. Ed. Julia Griffiths, Boston: Jewett and Company, 1853. pp. 174–239.

My Bondage and My Freedom (1855)

Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881, revised 1892)

Douglass founded and edited the abolitionist newspaper the North Star from 1847 to 1851. He merged the North Star with another paper to create the Frederick Douglass' Paper.

In the Words of Frederick Douglass: Quotations from Liberty's Champion. Edited by John R. McKivigan and Heather L. Kaufman. Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press, 2012. ISBN 978-0-8014-4790-7

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Douglass and Anna had five children: Rosetta Douglass, Lewis Henry Douglass, Frederick Douglass Jr., Charles Remond Douglass, and Annie Douglass (died at the age of ten). Charles and Rosetta helped produce his newspapers

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Douglass considered photography very important in ending slavery and racism, and believed that the camera would not lie, even in the hands of a racist white, as photographs were an excellent counter to the many racist caricatures, particularly in blackface minstrelsy. He was the most photographed American of the 19th Century, self-consciously using photography to advance his political views.[67][68] He never smiled, specifically so as not to play into the racist caricature of a happy slave. He tended to look directly into the camera to confront the viewer, with a stern look.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Douglass

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https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/frederick-douglass

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He died after suffering a heart attack on his way home from a meeting of the National Council of Women, a women’s rights group still in its infancy at the time, in Washington, D.C.

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wife Anna died in 1882, and he remarried in 1884, to white activist Helen Pitts.

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In 1877, Douglass met with Thomas Auld, the man who once “owned” him, and the two reportedly reconciled.

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post-war Reconstruction era. became the first black man to hold high office.

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Although he supported President Abraham Lincoln in the early years of the Civil War, Douglass would fall into disagreement with the politician after the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, which effectively ended the practice of slavery. Douglass was disappointed that Lincoln didn’t use the proclamation to grant ex-slaves the right to vote, particularly after they had fought bravely alongside soldiers for the Union army.

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North Star. The newsletter’s name was changed to Frederick Douglass’ Paperin 1851, and was published until 1860, just before the start of the Civil War.

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during the meeting and said, “In this denial of the right to participate in government, not merely the degradation of woman and the perpetuation of a great injustice happens, but the maiming and repudiation of one-half of the moral and intellectual power of the government of the world.”

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He was the only African American to attend the Seneca Falls Convention, a gathering of women’s rights activists in New York, in 1848.

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the United States in 1847, Douglass began publishing his own abolitionist newsletter, the North Star. He also became involved in the movement for women’s rights.

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one of his most famous speeches, in England, the so-called “London Reception Speech.”

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During his time in Ireland, he would meet the Irish nationalist Daniel O’Connell, who would become an inspiration for his later work.

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most famous of his five autobiographies, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave.

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In one particularly brutal attack, in Pendleton, Indiana, Douglass’ hand was broken. The injuries never fully healed, and he never regained full use of his hand.

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1843, Douglass had become part of the American Anti-Slavery Society’s “Hundred Conventions” project

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Garrison who encouraged Douglass to become a speaker and leader in the abolitionist movement

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In New Bedford, Douglass began attending meetings of the abolitionist movement. During these meetings, he was exposed to the writings of abolitionist and journalist William Lloyd Garrison.

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Once settled in New York, he sent for Anna Murray, a free black woman from Baltimore he met while in captivity with the Aulds. She joined him, and the two were married in September 1838. They would have five children together.

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Douglass finally left Covey’s farm in 1838,

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As word spread of his efforts to educate fellow slaves, Thomas Auld took him back and transferred him to Edward Covey, a farmer who was known for his brutal treatment of the slaves in his charge. Roughly 16 at this time, Douglass was regularly whipped by Covey.

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From there, he taught himself to read and write. By the time he was hired out to work under William Freeland, he was teaching other slaves to read, using the Bible.

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From there, Douglass was “given” to Lucretia Auld, whose husband, Thomas, sent him to work with his brother Hugh in Baltimore. Douglass credits Hugh’s wife Sophia with first teaching him the alphabet.

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lived for a time with his maternal grandmother. However, at the age of six, he was moved away from her to live and work on the Wye House plantation in Maryland.

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separated from his mother as an infant

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born Frederick Bailey (his mother’s name)

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mother was of Native American ancestry and his father was of African and European descent.

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born into slavery in or around 1818 in Talbot County, Maryland. Douglass himself was never sure of his exact birth date.

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An advocate for women’s rights, and specifically the right of women to vote,

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slave in Maryland.

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death in 1895.

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After that conflict and the Emancipation Proclamation of 1862, he continued to push for equality and human rights until his death

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He became a leader in the abolitionist movement, which sought to end the practice of slavery, before and during the Civil War.

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escaped slave who became a prominent activist, author and public speaker.

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American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman.