Agitation provides the movement, friction, and force necessary to change stubborn social conditions. They both require sustained conviction. They both also require the company of elders who understand what it takes to make things clean, who can teach us to release whatever can wash away, and who will take the time to work alongside the young.
Photo credit: Peter Hershey The first time I tried to hand-wash a load of laundry I was in the cool mountains of Jamaica in a house without a hot water heater. During this period of relative freedom Douglass joined the East Baltimore Improvement Society, a benevolent and educational organization, where he met Anna Murray, a free black woman whom he later married. In , after his owner threaten to take away his right to hire out his time, Douglass decided to run away.
With papers borrowed from a free black sailor, he boarded a train and rode to freedom. To conceal his identity, he adopted a new last name, Douglass, chosen from Sir Walter Scott's poem, "Lady of the Lake.
After escaping from slavery, he adopted a new last name--Douglass--chosen from Sir Walter Scott's poem "Lady of the Lake," to conceal his identity; settled in New Bedford, Massachusetts, where in worked in the shipyards; and began to attend antislavery meetings. It was then that he became the first fugitive slave to speak on behalf of the abolitionist cause. As a travelling lecturer, Douglass electrified audiences with his first-hand accounts of slavery. His speeches combated the notion that slaves were content and undermined belief in racial inferiority.
When many Northerners refused to belief that this eloquent orator could possibly have been a slave, he responded by writing an autobiography that identified his pervious owners by name.
Fear that his autobiography made him vulnerable to kidnapping and return to slavery led Douglass to flee to England. Initially, Douglass supported William Lloyd Garrison and the radical abolitionists, who believed that moral purity was more important than political success.
The radicals questioned whether the Bible represented the word of God because it condoned slavery; withdrew from churches that permitted slavery; and refused to vote or hold public office. Douglass later broke with Garrison, started his own newspaper, The North Star, and supported political action against slavery. He was an early supporter of the Republican party, even though its goal was to halt slavery's expansion, not to abolish the institution.
Following the Civil War, the party would reward his loyalty by appointing him marshall and register of deeds for the District of Columbia and minister to Haiti. Douglass supported many reforms including temperance and women's rights. He was one of the few men to attend the first women's rights convention, held in Seneca Falls, New York, and he was the only man to vote for a resolution demanding the vote for women.
Nevertheless, Douglass's main cause was the struggle against slavery and racial discrimination. In the s and s, he not only lectured tirelessly against slavery, he also raised funds to help fugitive slaves reach safety in Canada. During the Civil War, he lobbied President Lincoln to make slave emancipation a war aim and organize black regiments. Declaring that "liberty won by white men would lack half its lustre," he personally recruited some 2, African American troops for the Union army.
Among the recruits were two of his sons, who took part in the bloody Union assault on Fort Wagner in South Carolina in July , which resulted in more than 1, northern casualties--but which proved black troops' heroism in battle. Douglass never wavered in his commitment to equal rights. During Reconstruction, he struggled to convince Congress to use federal power to safeguard the freedmen's rights. Over the course of his long life, he wrote three memoirs, one novella, and thousands of essays and speeches not to mention countless letters and poems.
Wells distributed to protest African-American exclusion from the fair. Douglass was an early adopter of photography. He immediately recognized its potential to present an image of black people different from that of the slave. Between and his death in , Douglass sat for dozens of portraits, becoming the most photographed American of the 19th century. A large photo mosaic of Frederick Douglass made out of dozens of his portraits welcomes visitors to the exhibit.
0コメント