By Jim Heffernan
Somehow racism has kept me from knowing very much about the story of Frederick Douglass. This week’s Saturday Sermon opened with a extended quote from the speech he gave in 1852 “What is the Fourth of July To a Slave.”*
I was stirred by the words, but was only vaguely aware of who Frederick Douglass was. I consider myself fairly educated. I was even a History major once, but somehow Douglass was skipped over in my classes.
That’s a shame because the story of his life story is compelling and more of us should know it. He was born with the surname of Bailey on a Maryland plantation in 1818 to a slave mother and a white slaveowner father.
In his autobiography, he reveals that he cannot remember seeing his mother in daylight. She was always in the fields when the sun came up. He was largely raised by his grandmother. His mother was sold to another owner when he was 5.
When he was 6, he was sold to the Auld family. Mrs. Auld was exceptional in that she treated him “as she supposed one human being ought to treat another.” She taught him the alphabet when he was 12, but when her husband found out he made her stop because he felt that “knowledge unfits a child to be a slave” . Frederick immediately saw that “knowledge is the pathway from slavery to freedom.”
When he was 16, he was sold to an owner who a “slave breaker”. He was beaten brutally and often until he escaped in 1838 when he was 20.
It would be another 26 years before the Emancipation Proclamation set him free. During the years between 1838 and 1863 he was like an undocumented immigrant of today. He could have been apprehended and “deported” back to his “slave breaker” owner.
He made his way to New York City and sent for Anne Murray, who he married as soon as she got to New York. The name Bailey was dropped and they used the name Douglass all of their life.
His powerful writing survives in his autobiographies and speeches. He must have been an incredible speaker because he earned large sums in America, Britain, and Ireland.
He published several widely read newspapers, but they always seem to go broke.
Besides being a fervent abolitionist, he was also a champion for women’s suffrage. He was the only black to attend the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848.
He wrote and spoke extensively throughout his life. He helped found the first black labor union. He tirelessly advocated for black equality and women’s suffrage.
He died of a heart attack in 1895 at after giving a speech at the Council of Women meeting in Washington D.C.
He was buried in Rochester, NY and Senators and Supreme Court Justices were pall bearers.
As always, discussion welcome at codger817@gmail.com
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*“Fellow-citizens! I will not enlarge further on your national inconsistencies. The existence of slavery in this country brands your republicanism as a sham, your humanity as a base pretense, and your Christianity as a lie. It destroys your moral power abroad; it corrupts your politicians at home. It saps the foundation of religion; it makes your name a hissing, and a bye-word to a mocking earth. It is the antagonistic force in your government, the only thing that seriously disturbs and endangers your Union. It fetters your progress; it is the enemy of improvement, the deadly foe of education; it fosters pride; it breeds insolence; it promotes vice; it shelters crime; it is a curse to the earth that supports it; and yet, you cling to it, as if it were the sheet anchor of all your hopes. Oh! be warned! be warned! a horrible reptile is coiled up in your nation’s bosom; the venomous creature is nursing at the tender breast of your youthful republic; for the love of God, tear away, and fling from you the hideous monster, and let the weight of twenty millions, crush and destroy it forever.”
