Download The Self-Made Freeman

The Self-Made Freeman
Frederick Douglass’s American
Rhetoric of “Liberty and Justice for
All”
Frederick Douglass (1818-1895)
• Representative ______
man
– Or, exception to the rule?
• The “Newtonian problem”
– best PR gets the credit
– Is he really “black” in the
same sense as Sojourner
Truth et al?
• Succeeds by modeling self
on schoolbook for whites
– Columbian Orator
– “Dialogue Between a
Master & a Slave”
Remanufacturing the
Representative Man
• Named himself at age 20
• Orator in a new American tradition
– Commanding presence
– “It could speak.”
– Willing to risk public fugitive status, & low birth
• 1845 (age 27): 1st edition of Narrative
– “Written by Himself”: self-mythologizer like Franklin
– Unlike Franklin, not member of the “club”
– Attacked, beaten, dragged from whites-only railcar
• Fled to Europe after publication; almost tossed overboard
– “Prejudice against color is stronger North than South”
• Met little prejudice in Europe – almost color-blind
The “Tool” of the White
Abolitionists?
• 1841: Garrison hears him speak on Nantucket
• 1848: FD moves family to Rochester NY
– Garrison viewed him as hired performer, not equal –
not trusted with money, responsibility
– Home becomes underground rail station, 1872 arson
– Attends Seneca Falls convention, votes for suffrage
• Founds newspaper, North Star
– Business run by white Englishwoman
– Refuses to denounce U.S. Constitution
Lincoln’s gadfly
• Stops short of advocating open rebellion
– Invited to join John Brown’s 1859 raid, declines
– I could live for slaves; John Brown could die for them”
• Denounced Lincoln for putting Union over ending
slavery
– “moral blindness . . . Helpless imbecility”
– Recruited 100 soldiers for 54th Mass regiment
– Met w/Lincoln to complain about ½-pay & no black
officers, risk of death and enslavement
• Works for 15th Amendment against “murderous
South” & “malignant North”
Douglass Postbellum
• 1872: Moves to Washington DC
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President of failed Freedman’s Bank
City marshal, hires blacks
Buys house formerly off limits to “blacks & Irishmen”
Returns to Eastern Shore, reunites with Lloyds
• Apologizes to Thomas Auld for story about grandmother – not
an Auld slave.
– 1882: Wife dies, marries Helen Pitts, white
– 1889: ambassador to Haiti
Precursor of Rosa Parks, MLK
• With Ida B. Wells, speaking tour against lynching
in South
– 1890-92: 850 Southern blacks killed by mobs
– Makes her his protégée
– 1894: “Lessons of the Hour” speech at DC church
• “when a black man commits a crime the whole race is made to
suffer”
• “the rights of the humblest citizen are as worthy of protection
as are those of the highest . . . Put away your race prejudice,
banish class prejudice . . . Your Republic will stand forever”
• 1895: dies at home while telling wife of women’s
rights rally he had just attended