by David W. Blight, 2018
What an EXCELLENT book; 764 pages on the life and times of Frederick Douglass. It is so well-written, you lived with him and experienced all of his striving, anguish, pain and suffering for freedom, first for himself and then for all slaves.
From the Introduction, “Born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, a slave, in Talbot County, Maryland, in February 1818, the future Frederick Douglass was the son of Harriet Bailey, one of five daughters of Betsy Bailey, and with some likelihood his mother’s white owner.”
When he was 8 years old, he was sent to live in Baltimore to be the boyhood companion of Tommy Auld, the son of Hugh Auld. Sophia Auld taught him his ABCs and spelling. This is how he learned to read and write, before Sophia was told not to by her husband. It was too late–Frederick Douglass became one of the most famous orators the world has ever known.
He escaped slavery at the age of 20. He wrote and spoke against slavery constantly. He married and had children. His sons served in the Civil War. He knew Lincoln very well. Although against slavery, Lincoln was for emigration of the slaves, a thing which Frederick Douglass railed against. Slaves were American through and through. They were entitled to remain in America. After the hard fought war and the 14th and 15th amendments were passed, Douglass had still to fight for the rest of his life against the racism that still ruled in the hearts of Americans. And to this day, this ugly racism still exists.
Frederick Douglass never gave up, never backed down, never stopped believing in the goal of freedom and equality for African Americans. He was indeed a “Prophet of Freedom.” He died of a heart attack on February 20, 1895, at the age of 77, with his wife, Helen, at his side. (His second wife, Helen, was a white woman and they remained true and steadfast as a couple despite years of condemnation and ridicule they endured. The hypocrisy of white America-it was ‘okay’ that black women were raped by their white masters, but a black man could not marry a white woman.) “The man of millions of words had gone cold and silent. He was scheduled to give a lecture that evening in a local black church in Hillsdale, and the carriage arrived just as he fell dead.”
What an excellent book – a masterpiece. Thank you, David W. Blight, for your superb research and writing to bring to life this magnificent human being.