C. Trotman

Frederick Douglass

A Biography

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

Written for young adults, this biography of Frederick Douglass covers the life of the most famous black abolitionist and intellectual of the 19th century. Frederick Douglass: A Biography explores the life of the most famous black abolitionist and intellectual of the 19th century. The book covers the major developments of Douglass's life from his birth in 1818 through his time as a slave and his rise to prominence as the most famous black voice for freedom of his time. The biography discusses Douglass's relationships with such figures as John Brown, the feminist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and five presidents of the United States, including Abraham Lincoln. It analyzes his role in national politics before, during, and after the Civil War, and examines the way his life is tied to significant local, regional, and national events. By focusing on the importance of spirituality in Douglass's life, this revealing work adds to our understanding of the man, the way he saw himself, and the many things he accomplished.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Greenwood
• Seitenzahl: 192
• Erscheinungstermin: 4. Januar 2011
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 240mm x 161mm x 15mm
• Gewicht: 460g
• ISBN-13: 9780313350368
• ISBN-10: 0313350361
• Artikelnr.: 31300823

Autorenporträt

C. James Trotman Ph.D.

Inhaltsangabe

October 3, 1894 Cedar Hill: Anacostia D.C. Dear Mr. Philips: I think I may
safely promise you a lecture on the first-February 1895 if life and health
permit. I will therefore put West Chester, Penna. for that date. I find
myself unable to be as confident in making appointments than I once was. I
begin to feel the weight of age. I am glad to know that a few of my
Abolitionist friends in West Chester are still living-and it will give me
joy to be there. Yours Truly, (signed) Frederick Douglass Frederick
Douglass gave his last public lecture on the campus of West Chester
University of Pennsylvania on February 1, 1895, 19 days before he died. He
was a frequent guest in the town of West Chester, visiting every decade
after his escape from slavery in 1838. Located approximately 25 miles from
center city Philadelphia, the Borough of West Chester, originally called
Turk's Head, had been a seat of radical abolitionism, primarily due to its
Quaker roots and to a certain degree of high-mindedness among its civic
leadership. West Chester offered Douglass rest from the demanding schedule
of the abolitionist movement, time for fellowship with friends and
supporters such as the prominent Darlington family and George Morris
Philips, his host on February 1, and the first principal of West Chester
Normal School, now West Chester University of Pennsylvania. The borough was
an oasis for Douglass, enabling him to relax and reflect upon the stages of
a life that made his name among the most internationally recognized of
Americans and the most distinguished voice of freedom to come from the
African American community in the 19th century. By the time of this
lecture, and nearing his death on February 20, 1895, Douglass's name and
recognition were synonymous with social reform, particularly in the
movement to abolish chattel slavery. He became famous in 1845 with the
publication of the first of three autobiographies, the Narrative of the
Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave. Written by Himself. The
ex-slave wrote compellingly about the experience of chattel slavery. In
some of the most memorable prose in American letters, he drew readers into
the traumatic experience of this captivity by describing what he saw with
his own eyes. His direct accounts and the narrative skills used to tell his
story opened up new understandings for his first readers and left a
historical document for future generations. For all of slavery's damage to
human souls, Douglass showed how it was possible to transform the trauma of
chattel slavery into a triumphant journey toward freedom. One has only to
read chapters 6 and 7 of the 1845 Narrative to discover the personal
meaning of truth that came to him through reading and writing in an age
when slave culture in America forbade it. These two chapters are among a
number of exceptional discussions in Douglass's body of writings and
speeches in which learning about one's self and the world is achieved
through literacy and rigorous thought, although he never spent a day of his
life in a schoolroom. And they are two of the best chapters to be found on
this subject in Douglass's body of writing. The chapters are repeated in
the two autobiographical sequels, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855) and the
Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1882). The three autobiographies, a
triptych of revelations about his life and times, along with his surviving
speeches and editorials, continue to be relevant resources today for
understanding the nature of subjugation, its victims, and their
malefactors, and the victory made possible through human struggle and
growth. In the brutal and ambiguous world of slavery in which normal human
interactions were replaced by unexplainable cruelty and forced acts of
human degradation, Douglass and his works are primary sources for having
initiated a broader discussion of slavery and eventually its constitutional
abolishment. The struggles of his life made him well known, first as a
speaker much sought after for the abolitionist movement and then as a
writer. But he made certain to note over and over again in the spoken or
written word about his thoughts and feelings that his struggles mirrored
the pain of others in bondage and in freedom as well. While including the
major facts and dates surrounding this historical figure, I have attempted
in this biography to call attention to the spiritual dimensions of
Douglass's life as an important part of his legacy. "Spirituality" is not
easy to define, but that does not justify ignoring it when it can help us
to understand our subject. I am using it primarily because Douglass used
the word. The word exists repeatedly throughout his speeches and written
works, although the meaning shifts. Semanticists and other philosophers of
language would acknowledge that "spirituality" is a polymorphous term. In
other words, it is the name for a wide range of ideas and concepts that
have significance in ordinary, day-to-day conversations, usually referring
to the unseen and the unexplainable; among philosophers it is a term used
to symbolize the process for interpreting meaning in the subjective life;
among theologians it is a term for the divine, the supernatural, and the
unseen but powerful forces in religious thought and experience. What are
the roots of this spirituality in the slave environment that Douglass knew?
We know from sound scholarly sources, especially the seminal histories
written by John Blassingame, John Hope Franklin, and Herbert Gutman, much
more about the characteristics of slave plantations and slave life than did
previous generations. Thanks to their scholarship and the splendid
biographies on Douglass by Benjamin Quarles, Philip S. Foner, Nathan
Huggins, Waldo Martin, and William McFeely, and the intellectual
discussions by David Blight, John Stauffer, Robert S. Levine, Gregory P.
Lampe, Maria Diedrich, Charles Blockson, Margaret Aymer, Henry Louis Gates,
Jr., Houston Baker, David Chesebrough, Cynthia Willett, Paul and Stephen
Kendrick, James Oakes, and Robert Wallace, they all demonstrate that slaves
were not passive figures at all; in other words, they were not asleep at
the switch of their existence. Collectively, the slaves had a capacity for
mentally turning down the noisy chatter of their insignificance and turning
off many of the negative messages sent out through a culture of bondage
that they were nothing at all. Now more than ever, information is available
about the survival skills of slaves: the significance of their prayers,
their worship rituals, and songs as measures of resistance that sought to
alter, at least in their minds, the dismal grind of life for them into the
epic development of a group within America's multicultural fabric and its
multilayered history. The former slave turned citizen-reformer spoke and
wrote about spirituality as a private source for describing his subjective
struggles with identity and for understanding the dynamics of slavery. For
Douglass, the word had authority and a number of interpretations that
enabled him to explain history to himself and to others as he experienced
it, wrote and spoke about it. Beyond the benefits of personal
understanding, the word provided him with a vocabulary to articulate the
development of his own world vision. In this context, therefore, by
reviewing some familiar and some lesser known works from his writings and
speeches, I hope to provide a picture of the uses of spirituality as a term
embracing the complexity of his feelings, to identify it as a powerful and
personal source for establishing his personal identity, and to see it used
as a means to present the complexity of his faith. Douglass had faith in
the divine, in God, and he was a Christian, but he was not bound to a
denomination, although he regularly attended the Washington, D.C.,
Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church in his later years. It
is one of the complexities in examining the role of spirituality in
Douglass's life that while he acknowledged a supreme being and was ordained
as a youth in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, he was
nevertheless unyieldingly critical in his speeches and writings of
religious institutions for their support of slavery. I have used the names
of well-known spirituals from African American culture as chapter titles
for this book. They are an acknowledged source of black folk life and they
predate acquired literacy in the black community. They are as much a part
of a process of critical thought among slaves as they are a part of human
history. They are rooted in the collective expression of an oppressed
people who uttered words and sounds together, to make sense of their lives,
before schooling was permitted and before their music became acceptable to
the larger society. This music spoke in simple terms about a complex world
the slaves experienced and about those who oppressed them. The spirituals
are of course religious by nature, but their connection with the
supernatural or divine is not just to provide a backdrop for the
presentation of history and culture. They are meaningful and serious human
actions. They were calls to worship. They brought about healing to many and
hope against the bleakness of the moment for slaves. They represent
artifacts of the past to be sure, but they are as much about today as they
are about yesterday. They have evolved within creative hands like
Douglass's to mold the literary form we know as the slave narrative. The
spirituals became a resource for future novelists, poets, and prose
writers. They were also a primary ingredient for the institution we know as
the black church, which is not a religious denomination at all, but the
name for the powerful religious force in the African American community
shielding black women, men, children, and families collectively and
individually from the horrific and alienating consequences of racism. And
at their core is the use of the Bible. When Douglass was in Belfast,
Ireland, in 1846, speaking on abolitionism, he was presented with a Bible
as a token of the Irish reformers regard for him. His response described
the importance of the Bible to him:This is an excellent token of your
regard. It is just what I want from you. It contains all the Words of
Heavenly Wisdom-it is opposed to everything that is wrong and it is in
favor of all that is right. It is filled with that Wisdom from above, which
is pure, and peaceable, and full of mercies and good fruits, without
prolixity, and without hypocrisy. It knows no one by the color of his skin.
It confers no privilege upon one class, which it does not confer upon
another. The fundamental principle running through and underlying the whole
is this-"Whatsoever ye would that men do to you, do you even so to them."
Today, in the celebrated artistry of the painter Jacob Lawrence, the poetry
of Rita Dove, and the prose mastery of the Nobel Prize-winning novelist
Toni Morrison, the legacy of the spirituals continues as a source for
artists and their vision of the human condition. For this book, they serve
to remind us of ancient sounds and meanings that gave fortitude to those
who had nothing else but hope in the songs to lift them up as they rose
with the morning sun. The spirituals are therefore a legacy within any
account of the American life of Frederick Douglass. Chapter 1, "I Been
[Re]'Buked," benefits from Frederick's 1845 Narrative, as do most
discussions about his early life. It begins on the Wye Plantation in
Maryland, with the drama of chattel slavery personalized through its impact
on his childhood. Through his story, readers witness the relationships with
his grandparents, his loss of childhood innocence, and then participate
with him through his exceptional social analysis of the plantation's
systematic violence and control of those under its domination. The slave
society as presented on the Wye Plantation served to reverse most of the
ordinary relationships between human beings. One of the continued interests
of this story is the manner in which Douglass's skills as a storyteller are
used to illustrate the tragic drama of plantation life itself. Chapter 2,
"Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen," follows Frederick's early years when
he lived in Baltimore beginning in 1826. One of the ways that slave masters
turned a profit was to create a contract with others for the use of their
slaves, in return for which the master received the slave's pay. The
centerpiece of this chapter is Frederick's intellectual growth shown by
describing the events leading to his learning to read and the circumstances
under which that happened. The growth discussed in the chapter was physical
and mental, as the restlessness of his nature became abundantly clear to
his masters. One book, The Columbian Orator, helped him to think through
some of the critical questions related to his own personal identity and
slavery. We then see him organizing an escape from freedom, only to realize
failure at first. Hugh Auld, his master, sends him back to live in St.
Michaels, where he confronts the slave-breaker Covey. It is an episode that
changed Frederick's life. He is then sent back to Baltimore where he meets
the love of his life, Anna Murray. He escapes from chattel slavery with
Anna's help. He becomes a father for the first time and learns about the
political strategies for abolishing slavery, setting the path for a career
in political reform. The efforts to escape the plantation are described
alongside his determination to become a free man, a family man, and a
responsible citizen. Chapter 3, "Amazing Grace," focuses upon Frederick's
initial response to freedom after having escaped slavery in 1838. The
chapter describes the new life for the fugitive and his bride. His contacts
with the Underground Railroad in New Bedford result in his changing his
name, which for slaves and others is an important part of the American
experience. We see him living in relative freedom, although there was
always the threat of slave catchers. Frederick attended abolitionist
meetings in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and met William Lloyd Garrison, the
leader of the radical wing of the movement and certainly one of its most
passionate voices. When he heard Frederick speak, he heard something
special. It was the authentic and articulate voice that the struggling
abolitionist movement needed to affirm itself and its public repudiation of
slavery. Their meeting became mutually beneficial as each found a need for
the other and their common goal: the elimination of slavery. Garrison's
abolitionist group hired Frederick to lecture. Those lectures became the
basis for his first autobiography. Threats to his life follow, forcing him
to leave the United States for a lecture series in England, the British
Isles, and in Ireland. He was an innocent abroad when he landed in
Liverpool in 1845. Less than two years later, however, his speeches and
lectures had been so well received that their success transformed him into
a celebrity for the abolitionist movement. In England, the antislavery
organization in England, led by British women, raised enough money to
purchase his freedom from his Maryland master, Thomas Auld. Chapter 4,
"Steal Away," traces Frederick's return from a nearly two-year exile in
Europe to his founding of the North Star in 1847, an abolitionist
newspaper. The turn to journalism represented his movement into the
mainstream where he could expand upon his work and voice as a social
reformer. At this point in his life, we see him engaging feminist
leadership, writing on women's rights, and increasingly receiving their
help and support on other political topics. Julia Griffiths and Ottilie
Assing represent European women who come to America and are part of his
life. These white women were the sources of innuendo given 19th-century
attitudes toward black and white relationships. Frederick is now
confronting society as a free man, developing his own independent thoughts
on the ideas commonly held by the abolitionist movement, especially the
Garrison branch of it. The year 1848 is as important as any in his life.
For the first time, he meets with John Brown and over the next decade
converses with Brown about the Kansas preacher's plans to eliminate slavery
with the famed insurrection at the military arsenal at Harper's Ferry in
Virginia. Later in 1848, Douglass joined the feminists at the Seneca Falls
Convention in New York. In the next decade, he delivered the signature
speeches of his career on American democracy and slavery in the famous 1852
Corinthian Hall address, "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" Five
years later he presented a critique of American law by challenging the
Supreme Court in its ruling of the Dred Scott decision of 1857, a case
famous for its legalizing slavery and for denying the slave citizenship. In
addition to these speeches, other important speeches are highlighted in a
decade in which Douglass's voice bursts forth for justice while he
distances himself from the bedrock Garrison belief that the Constitution is
a slave document. Chapter 5, "Wrestlin' Jacob," follows the significance of
John Brown's attack on Harper's Ferry in 1859 and its consequences.
Douglass is linked with Brown's assault and is forced to flee the country,
first to Canada and then to England. The Civil War dominates the decade of
the 1860s with Douglass's life divided between the politics of recruiting
black men for the Union army and making the case for the Emancipation
Proclamation. He meets with President Abraham Lincoln three times, urging
him on two of these occasions to use the momentum of the Emancipation
Proclamation to push for an end to slavery and to enlist black men as
soldiers in the war. Lincoln's death leaves Douglass without a valuable
ally, but nothing deters him from his quest to push for legislation that
would create citizenship status for blacks. In chapter 6, "Roll, Jordan,
Roll," we see Frederick Douglass serving the cause of social and political
reform in several capacities. With the end of the Civil War, he reached out
to support radical Republican reconstruction plans and continued his
advisory role with U.S. presidents, meeting first with President Andrew
Johnson and later campaigning for President Ulysses S. Grant. We also see
him resuming his conversation with women leaders and extending his public
service. At one point during the 1870s, he is nominated for the office of
vice president of the United States. He did not run for the office but he
did accept several other appointments, including serving as the president
of the Freedmen's Bank. President Benjamin Harrison appointed him to lead
the diplomatic mission to Haiti and to the Dominican Republic. He also paid
a sentimental visit to his former slave owner and his home on the Maryland
eastern shore. He then resumed his journalistic career by purchasing
majority ownership of the New National Era newspaper. A fire destroyed his
Rochester home, which led him to move his family to Washington. In
addition, this is also a period of very profound personal change and loss.
Anna, his wife of 44 years, died. He remarried Helen Pitts, a white woman,
the union between the two creating its own controversy as a result of their
racially mixed marriage. Finally, the chapter concludes by discussing his
leadership role in the Chicago World's Fair of 1892. Chapter 7, "Climbing
Jacob's Ladder," ends the book by considering the subject of Douglass's
legacy. One source for discussing Douglass's place in history is his own
self-reflections. He is well aware of the significance of his life. Another
and perhaps more persuasive source is his impact on others, using here as a
case in point his impact on the renowned painter Jacob Lawrence, whose
earliest work was inspired by Douglass's life. Although there are numerous
examples of Douglass's presence in world culture, the final chapter argues
for his life to resonate on a broad contemporary scale, with none more
fitting than continuing to bring his life before today's readers, and thus
continue his legacy of agitating for a better world and a more effective
democracy for all of us. NOTES1. Margaret P. Aymer, First Pure, Then
Peaceable: Frederick Douglass, Darkness and the Epistle of James, New York:
T &T Clark International, 2008, p. 1.