FREDERICK DOUGLASS

1818 - 1895

• One of the most important figures in America's struggle for civil rights and racial equality

• Born into slavery around 1818.

• He eventually escaped and became a respected American diplomat, a counselor to four presidents, a highly regarded orator, and an influential writer.

• He accomplished everything without any formal education. He was essentially self-taught.

NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS AN AMERICAN SLAVE (1845)

• The Narrative describes his life from early childhood until his escape from slavery in 1838.

• It became an instant bestseller in America as well as in Europe, where it was translated into French and German.

• Despite its critical and popular acclaim, however, it was met with skepticism by pro-slavery Americans, who could not believe that such a brilliant account could be produced by a slave with no formal education. Some thought that the text was a clever counterfeit document produced by abolitionists and passed off as Douglass’ writing.

Autobiography

• Like other autobiographies, Douglass chooses to begin his story by telling when and where he was born. Yet, this is impossible since slave owners keep slaves ignorant about their age and parentage in order to strip them of their identities

• Slaves reduced to the level of animals: “Slaves know as little of their ages as horses know of theirs.”

• He vividly details the physical cruelties inflicted on slaves, including the rape of female slaves by white male owners

• Separation of mother and child is another way slave owners control their slaves, preventing slave children from developing familial bonds, loyalty to another slave, and a knowledge of heritage and identity

Morality • Douglass shows how slavery corrupts the morality

of whites. • Initially Mrs. Sophia Auld, his mistress, was a kind

and industrious person, who treated Douglass like a genuine human being because she had never owned a slave before. In the beginning, she did not understand that teaching Douglass to read and write would free his mind. But after her husband explained to her that freeing Douglass’ mind could lead her to losing her slave, she changed her attitude.• As long as whites can keep slaves ignorant, they can

control them.

Education

• Douglass spent about seven years in Master Hugh Auld’s house and, in secret, during that time he learned to read and write.

• He tricked neighboring kids into teaching him by giving them bread in exchange for lessons and practiced writing copying little Thomas’s books.

• Ironically, his ability to read soon made him unhappy, for it opened up a whole new- and wretched- world for him. Reading newspapers, he realized the enormity of a people enslaved by powerful white masters

• He was only twelve years old when he resolved to eventually run away.

• According to Douglass, the underground railroad (an organized system of cooperation among abolitionists helping fugitive slaves escape to the North of Canada) should be called the “upperground railroad.”

• He honors“those good men and women for their noble daring, and applauds them for willingly subjecting themselves to bloody persecution,” but he is adamantly opposed to anyone revealing the means whereby slaves escape.

• One of Douglass’ central goals is to debunk the mythology of slavery. Southerners and some Northerners held certain beliefs about slavery which helped them rationalize its existence.

INHUMAN CONDITIONS ON SLAVE-TRADE SHIPS

• Some believed that slavery was justifiable because several passages from the Bible point to the descendants of Ham (Noah’s son) being destined for slavery (Genesis 9:18-27).

• It was believed that God cursed Ham by turning his skin black and his descendants into slaves. For Southerners, therefore, the descendants of Ham were predestined by the scriptures to be slaves.

• Children of mixed-race parentage were always classified as slaves.

• If the dark skin of Ham is said to be a sign of this curse, asks Douglass, then why are mullattos – some of whom have skin not significantly darker than whites – also destined by birth to be slaves?

• Another myth held by Southerners was that Africans were intellectually inferior and deserved, or even needed, the white man’s care.

• It was, as British writer Rudyard Kipling describes, “the white man’s burden” to colonize, civilize, and Christianize non-Europeans

• The slave system discourages solidarity among slaves. Owners encourage slaves to betray other slaves; a traitor double-crosses Douglass and prevents his first escape attempt.

• Keeping slaves drunk is also one way of keeping them servile.• When owners of property died, got married, or

changed their familial ties, their property often changed hands. Slaves were particularly afraid of being sold to Georgia traders because in Georgia slaves were treated even more harshly.

• Appraisers valued the slaves much the same way they assessed animals.

• He condemns American churches and ministers for not speaking out against slavery. The FUGITIVE SLAVE ACT of 1850 legitimized fugitive slave hunting in free states.

• Under this Act, even freed African Americans could easily be accused of being fugitive slaves and taken to the South. For Douglass, the Christian church which allows this law to remain in effect, is not really a Christian church at all.

• Existence of two different legal and moral systems, one for whites and another for slaves. Killing a slave was not considered a crime by the courts nor by the community in Maryland.

• Throughout his life Douglass remained close to many Republican politicians, including President Grant and Abraham Lincoln, for whose election campaign he worked in 1860.

• During that time he worked hard to persuade the Union to accept African Americans in the military – two black regiments, the 54th and 55th were formed

• In the years preceding and following his death, the increasing use of segregation denied African Americans the rights accorded by the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments.

• A year after Douglass’ death, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregation was legal under the Constitution; the ‘separate but equal’ doctrine was not fully overturned until the CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 1964.

Fourth of July

• He delivered this speech on July 5, 1852. It is generally considered his greatest and one of the greatest speeches of the 19th century. Before you read the speech you can follow these links to learn more about Douglass’s life and the evolution of his thought in this period.

• Short bio of Frederick Douglass PBS series Africans in AmericaHistorical Context of Speech:• At the time of the delivery of this speech, Douglass had been living

in Rochester, New York for several years editing a weekly abolitionist newspaper. He was invited to give a fourth of July speech by the Ladies Anti-Slavery Society of Rochester. In the early 1850’s, tensions over slavery were high across the county.

• The Compromise of 1850 had failed to resolve the controversy over the admission of new slave states to the Union.

• The Fugitive Slave Act passed by Congress as part of this compromise was bitterly resented by the Northern states. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel about slavery,

Continued…• Uncle Tom’s Cabin: Or Life among the Lowly had been

published a few months before and unexpectedly became a national bestseller. Across the country people were thinking and arguing about slavery, abolitionism, and where the tensions were likely to lead the nation.

New Criticism (approach)• New Criticism is an approach to literature which was

developed by a group of American critics, most of whom taught at southern universities during the years following the first World War.

• The New Critics wanted to avoid impressionistic criticism , which risked being shallow and arbitrary, and social/ historical approaches which might easily be subsumed by other disciplines.

• Thus, they attempted to systematize the study of literature, to develop an approach which was centered on the rigorous study of the text itself. They were given their name by John Crowe Ransom, who describes the new American formalists in The New Criticism (1941).

Continued…• New Criticism, incorporating Formalism, examines the

relationships between a text's ideas and its form, between what a text says and the way it says it.

• New Critics "may find tension, irony, or paradox in this relation, but they usually resolve it into unity and coherence of meaning" (Biddle 100). New Criticism attempts to be a science of literature, with a technical vocabulary, some of which we all had to learn in junior high school English classes (third-person, denoument, etc.).

• Working with patterns of sound, imagery, narrative structure, point of view, and other techniques discernible on close reading of the text, they seek to determine the function and appropriateness of these to the self-contained work.

Historicism• http://www.cla.purdue.edu/english/theory/newhistoricism/

modules/introduction.html• Modules…