September 14th, 2009
Given his newfound celebrity, Douglass sensed that his slave masters would dispatch agents to return him to Maryland. He fled to England and raised enough money to purchase his freedom. Upon his return to the United States he found his historic newspaper. Douglass was a skilled orator whom historians often cite as having no equal. His epic speech — “What to the Slaves is the Fourth of July?” – was delivered on Independence Day in 1852 in Rochester, NY, and stands as a seminal commentary on the disenfranchisement of Blacks in the United States. Douglass later wrote two autobiographies, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855) and The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881).
Juxtaposed against the liberties blacks enjoy today, it is difficult to fathom the inner strength of Douglass against the backdrop of the brutality of slavery. Drawing from his faith and a belief in a greater destiny for his people, Frederick Douglass is the standard towards which present Black “leadership” should strive to achieve.
There is a new generation of Black Americans who must now continue the struggle to its logical conclusion: The recognition of people of African descent as full and equal citizens in the democracy.
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August 8th, 2009
“To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker. It is just as criminal to rob a man of his right to speak and hear as it would be to rob him of his money”
Frederick Douglass
“A Plea for Free Speech”
Boston, Mass., 1860
The words of this 19th century visionary are prophetic and profound. The challenge of continuing the great tradition of journalism and advocacy championed by Frederick Douglass in his pioneering abolitionist newspaper, The North Star.
Frederick Douglass was born into slavery as Frederick Augustus Bailey in February of 1817 in Talbot County, Maryland. He was raised on the plantation of Colonel Edward Lloyd. At the age of seven Douglass was sent to the Baltimore home of relatives of his master, Thomas Auld. His psychological break from slavery came when he stood down a notorious “slave breaker,” Edward Covey, during a fight. In one of his autobiographies Douglass cited the Covey incident as a turning point in his life.
He escaped to the North in 1838 and became an articulate spokesperson for the emancipation of Blacks. While living in New Bedford, Massachusetts he adopted Douglass as his surname. In 1845 he published his Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass in the face of great danger. It was one of the most vivid and compelling accounts of slavery ever written. His courage in publishing this personal history is all the more profound given the fact that, as a fugitive slave, Douglass was always subject to recapture under the Fugitive Slave Laws.
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June 11th, 2009
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