Black History Month has passed, but this final installment of the Black history month series was intentionally left for March 1st, 2024, because Black history is global history and should be celebrated year-round. And the third and final installment highlights one of humankind’s greatest ambassadors, if not the greatest, the Honorable Frederick Douglass.
Douglass’ life’s journey from slave to Statesman alongside his abilities were so incredible that the British press would often write how they were in marvel at how such a cultured gentleman could have ever been a slave. Some of his peers would equate his greatness to the greatness of George Washington and Ulysses S. Grant.
To Douglass, slavery was something that was designed to destroy thinking powers, but his love for words and ability to inspire other who were eager to learn and dreamers like him was unshakable. He represented the peak intellectual standard of his time and considered a conqueror of bondage, an unstoppable force that was armed with a pen and gifted with a voice. Both his pen and his voice were proclaimed with his prowess being lion-like and his sharp words were capable of tearing people into pieces.
What started out as a life on a planation, where violence and degradation was the norm, somehow concluded with a man who eventually saw himself as being “raceless”, as he rose from humble beginnings and into the halls of power. Much of Douglass’ writing still holds relevance, especially his respect for life-long learning and self-reliance.
Who was this remarkable man that may be humankind’s greatest ambassador, who was described by people of his time as being daringly insurgent and of great intellectual and physical power?
The “what” defines the “who”. Understanding the “how” is next to impossible.
Being able to overcome the conditions and limitations of one’s time is something that is universally respected, but conquering the impossible is what Douglass managed to accomplish. Douglass was born into slavery and his “childhood” was where his first introduction into the power of negotiation came from and where he would learn to define himself by his opposition. That opposition became his motive power, opposition arguments became the tools he leveraged to make counter arguments in the courts of moral justice.
By some chance, the wife of Douglass’ master agreed to teach him foundational literacy. However, when his master found out, he made sure that Douglass lost all his privileges, and the wife became cold and cruel to the child. That surprised him. It saddened him. It hurt him. But it also inspired him. Because it was this experience that would help him to realize that where the power of slavery originated from and how it was perpetuated – knowledge was the key to unshackling the chains of slavery. This realization was followed with internalized thinking, both psychological and philosophical, and it was the start of Douglass discovering the power of his mind.
Education and slavery were incompatible. The power imbalance between slave master and slave relied on a slave’s recognition of the master as an authority. These realizations snowballed and eventually Douglass began being seen by other slave boys as being more than chattel. None of it went unnoticed by his master, who sent him away to work at the docks as punishment for influencing other slaves.
During his time at the docks, Douglass would be the victim of violence, but he would also go on to become friends with other immigrant kids who he got to teach him how to spell. In return, he would provide them with bread. These sessions between the boys eventually led to conversations as to why Douglass was destined to be a slave for life and why the White boys were free. These boys took him in and disregarded his skin color. They supported him emotionally, and confided in him that slavery was unfair, and sparked the hope that one day he would be free. Their words encouraged him, they were Irish and it was the first time he experienced trust with humanism beyond race.
Upon returning to his master, Douglass would attempt to run away and convinced a few other slaves to join him. The plot failed after one person shared the plans and Douglass and three others were jailed. What may have saved Douglass’ life was his lawyer-like argument that no crime had been committed, that no evidence existed, and that no one had any case against him except for the words of a betrayer. That, and Douglass managing to tell the prisoners to deny everything.
Two weeks after the incident, his master came to pick him up and gave him an ultimatum, that he would not sell Douglass and would send him back to the docks to learn a trade and that he would be granted freedom by twenty-five (he was eighteen at the time). Douglass struggled to understand why his master did not sell him away and would only come to realize the truth many decades later as to why he was not sold to his doom. However, shortly after arriving to the docks in Baltimore, Douglass would escape bondage, fleeing Northward and becoming a fugitive in the process.
The Colombian Orator (1979) and a fight with a slave master forever changed his life’s trajectory.
A second-hand copy of The Colombian Orator that Douglass bought for fifty cents at a local bookstore, saved by doing odd jobs, would change his life forever. This book would become his closest companion and it introduced him to the importance of motivation and confidence. It also introduced him to elements of speech making like cadence, pace, variety, gestures of the arms, hands, shoulders, and head. He began to apply those lessons, gaining knowledge through experience, but also by continuing to read but also by learning the “art of writing”.
Douglass referred to reading, writing, and speaking as being his life force and reason to live at the time. He described powerful oratory as being capable of scattering the clouds of ignorance and error from the atmosphere of reason and as being able to introduce a benign mind to different truths.
When Douglass’ master found out of his activities, he sent the boy to be beaten and “retrained”. Douglass wrote the following about the experience, “I was broken in body, soul, and spirit. My natural elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, the disposition to read departed … behold a man transformed into a brute.” At the new plantation, the new master would beat him for no reason, and on one occasion when Douglass had heat stroke, his master beat him and opened a gash on his head. That experience resulted in Douglass walking his way back to his original master’s store, all bloodied and clothes torn, and asked his owner to recall Douglass back. However, his owner refused to believe him and then ridiculed Douglass, ordering him to make his way back.
Upon returning to the new master’s plantation, Douglass ran away from another beating and hid in the corn fields before another slave came to assist his needs. Eventually the slaves began to love Douglass because they believed that he was hated for his knowledge and persecuted because they feared him.
One day, Douglass reacted to an unprovoked beating by fighting back and it resulted in a two-hour fight, overtaking the master and frightening him after Douglass began to strangle him by the throat and drew blood with his nails. The master surrendered. The entire incident was a blur to Douglass later on in his life whenever he tried to understand where that “daring spirit” and “fighting madness” had come from, but he considered it a victory and described it as a demonstration of physical force necessary for dignity and power.
The two-hour fight had other impacts too. Douglass acquired an inner-freedom and outward pride writing, “It was a resurrection from the dark and pestiferous tomb of slavery, to the heaven of comparative freedom”. Lucky for Douglass, his new master did not report the incident to the authorities because he was ashamed and feared losing his reputation or Douglass would have been hanged. And that new master never hit him again for the time he remained at the new plantation and before returning to his old master. His lost spirit was rediscovered, and his dreams rekindled. Douglass was only seventeen-years-old but was seen as being special by the older male slaves stemming from his literacy and fight.
Frederick Douglass the New.
After escaping slavery, Douglass forged himself a new identity of self as a public man of intellect, of courageous activism, and as a writer. There was also a demand to hear him speak, his words were described as proof positive, intellectual proof, but also graceful, fluent, logical, and convincing.
There would also be a shift in Douglass’ language from 1952, where he used language to separate between himself and “your” father, “your” Declaration of Independence”, and “your” Fourth of July. Ten years later it changed to, “The claims of OUR fathers upon OUR memory, administration and gratitude are founded in the fact that they wisely and bravely and successfully met the crisis of their day.” The new Douglass had taken the position that this was now his age and his country and that he had a duty to live up to its promise.
Frederick Douglass meets Abraham Lincoln.
The ability to make people think, through writing and speaking may have been what secured Douglass a meeting with Abraham Lincoln. That initial meeting left Douglass with an understanding as to why the moniker of “Honest” was given to Lincoln and he believed that he was the most transparent person he had ever met. He appreciated Lincoln’s decency and forthrightness, and left the meeting feeling big and standing firm, and there was a shared connection that was strengthened from the fact that Lincoln’s father was an Indiana dirt farmer and may have helped the two to understand each other better.
Later, when Lincoln became President, he would refer to Douglass as friend, “Here comes my friend, for all to hear.” Also saying, “There is no man in the country whose opinion I value more than yours.” The assassination of Lincoln hit Douglass hard, and it was an eye-opening experience as to how much work there was to be done even after slavery had been abolished. As a result, Douglass would speak on the importance of Blacks having equality under the law, the ability to own land, the ability to vote, and so much more.
Frederick Douglass full circle.
What may surprise most people is that, after everything that Douglass was put through in his life, he would end up reconciling with his former master. At some point in Douglass’ life, there was realization that both he and his former master were victims of circumstances of birth, education, law, and customs. And it was a realization that both men shared, they seemed to understand that their fates had been predetermined, and they shed tears together. That conversation between him and his former master was brief, it was twenty minutes, with his former master laying in bed, in old age and near death.
During that conversation, Douglass and his former master discussed the past, with his former master referring to him with the title “Marshall”. However, Douglass requested to be called by his first name, “Frederick”, maybe as a way to show that they were both one of the same flesh. The master spoke about why he did not sell him away when he rebelled, “I always knew you were too smart to be a slave.” It was the opening of two containers that were bound to corrode with hatred, and Douglass later write about it saying, “Even the constancy of hate breaks down… before the brightness of infinite light”.
After his travels in later-life, Douglass came to another realization after seeing the conditions and limitations of people from all walks of life. He would go on to say felt more to be a man and a member of the great human family than to be a member of any one of the many varieties of the human race. He wanted to uphold a gold standard that all people could be proud of and aspire toward.
The inner Frederick Douglass in us all.
The Honorable Frederick Douglass went on to achieve many titles in his life and that entire story is best understood by reading David W. Blight’s biography on Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass – Prophet of Freedom (2018). It tells the story of a person born into slavery and how they managed to overcome the circumstance and limitations of their time, by embracing the idea of being a life-long learner and becoming the greatest mind of their time, but having a desire to set a standard that all people from all walks of life could aspire towards.
Perhaps the lesson to takeaway from the life that the Honorable Frederick Douglass lived is that everyone has it within themselves to rise about the conditions and limitations of their time, by stretching their mind to the world that is and that can be if they commit themselves to the idea of being lifelong learners. Because Douglass rejected any notion of “genius” and good luck theory of achievement, and instead only accepting hard work, trained habit, and systemic endeavor as being able to lead to world-changing ideas.
Here is to Black history month, both in February and every month forward. For the impact that the world’s Black population has had on the world today is indelible and rich, and we are all better for having one another.
