Founded in 1896, the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs merged multiple organizations, large and small, into one association whose common goals were to support racial and gender equality.
The NACWC continued their work well into JFK’s administration, including advocating that Frederick Douglass’s home be made into a National Park. The organization’s president Dr. Rosa Gragg wrote to Ken O’Donnell, Special Assistant to the President in early 1962 with their request.
JFKWHSFHW-005-005-p0008 Letter from Dr. Rosa Gragg to Kenneth O’Donnell
In 1962, JFK signed a bill doing just that, and members of the club, including their president Dr. Rosa Gragg, were present at the singing.
AR7448-C. President John F. Kennedy Designates Frederick Douglass Home Part of National Park System
“Slavery has existed in this country too long and has stamped its character too deeply and indelibly, to be blotted out in a day or a year, or even in a generation. The slave will yet remain in some sense a slave, long after the chains are taken from his limbs, and the master will yet retain much of the pride, the arrogance, imperiousness and conscious superiority, and love of power, acquired by his former relation of master. Time, necessity, education, will be required to bring all classes into harmonious and natural relations…
Law and the sword can and will, in the end abolish slavery. But law and the sword cannot abolish the malignant slaveholding sentiment which has kept the slave system alive in this country during two centuries. Pride of race, prejudice against color, will raise this hateful clamor for oppression of the negro as heretofore. The slave having ceased to be the abject slave of a single master, his enemies will endeavor to make him the slave of society at large.”
-Frederick Douglass, December 28, 1862, Rochester, New York, Speech at the Spring Street AME Zion Church
“But the question is, Did John Brown fail? He certainly did fail to get out of Harpers Ferry before being beaten down by United States soldiers; he did fail to save his own life, and to lead a liberating army into the mountains of Virginia. But he did not go to Harpers Ferry to save his life.
“The true question is, Did John Brown draw his sword against slavery and thereby lose his life in vain? And to this I answer ten thousand times, No! No man fails, or can fail, who so grandly gives himself and all he has to a righteous cause. No man, who in his hour of extremest need, when on his way to meet an ignominious death, could so forget himself as to stop and kiss a little child, one of the hated race for whom he was about to die, could by any possibility fail.”
Frederick Douglass, 30 May 1881, oration on the fourteenth anniversary of the raid on Harpers Ferry
There are always questions in regard to slavery such as, “When did the first slaves make it to the America’s?”, “Who approved of such cruelty?” Slavery has inhabited every corner of the globe and still lives on today. Our story of slavery begins in the 1400’s after the Portuguese embark on exploring the coast of West Africa. King Charles II legalized the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade in the mid 1600’s. This aloud the Royal African Company to transport Africans they called “black gold” to the Americas. By this time, plantations in both the Caribbean Islands and America were booming and owners needed an abundance of slaves to maintain their cash crops. As the number of Africans began to diminish from the coast, Europeans moved inland raiding small towns and villages. You can find more information here.
This is an illustrated image published in The Graphic(a popular London illustrated weekly newspaper) that depicts Muslims raiding and kidnapping people in the East Central Africa region.
During the years 1525-1866, 12.5 million Africans were taken from Africa to the New World. Approximately 300,000 of those Africans were shipped to America. The last U.S. slave ship docked in Mobile Bay 3 years before the Emancipation Proclamation was signed by Abraham Lincoln in January of 1863. She was called Clotilda and came with 110-160 slaves. Here is a picture of what the ship looked like and the path it took to get to America.
Among the thousands of slaves that were taken from Africa to America was Frederick Douglass’ family. Frederick Douglass was actually born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey and was raised a slave. He ran away at age 20 and adopted the surname “Douglas” after Sir Walter Scott’s The Lady of the Lake. He wrote three autobiographies discussing his life as a slave and two additional biographies (My Bondage and My FreedomandThe Life and Times of Frederick Douglass) that elevated the southern culture. Below is a picture of Douglass in his younger years.
Known as the most important black American leader of the 19th century, Douglass was also a great orator and writer of persuasive power. He was an abolitionist long before the Civil War and even met with President Abraham Lincoln convincing him that “the negro is the stomach of the rebellion”. In other words, if Lincoln frees the slaves he will have more Union soldiers to fight against the Confederacy. After the Emancipation Proclamation takes effect in January of 1863, Douglass recruits black soldiers for the Union. An original hand-signed Leland-Boker edition of the Emancipation Proclamation lives at the Allen County Public Library.
Lincoln valued Douglass’ opinions greatly. Frederick Douglass advocated for issues concerning unequal pay and treatment of African American soldiers and racial inequality. In his book The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, he wrote,
“Though slavery was abolished, the wrongs of my people were not ended. Though they were not slaves, they were not quite free. No man can be truly free whose liberty is dependent upon the thought, feeling, and actions of others, and who has himself no means in his own hands for guarding, protecting, defecting, and maintaining that liberty.”
Douglass knew the first step to African American independence was the abolishment of slavery, but he knew the equality of whites and blacks would only come with time and with strong leaders to carry-on his legacy. Here is a picture of the abolitionist himself in later years.
In April of 1865, Frederick Douglass along with thousands of people across America mourned the death of President Abraham Lincoln. In Douglass’ eulogy for Lincoln, he strongly states, “…Abraham Lincoln, while unsurpassed in his devotion, to the welfare of the white race, was also in a sense hitherto without example, emphatically the black mans President: the first to show any respect for their rights as men.” Because of this, Douglass gave the citizens of the United States hope for the future; to walk in our martyred President’s footsteps and continue the life Lincoln would have wanted us to live. Below is a picture of Lincoln’s funeral procession in New York.
During Frederick Douglass’ last years he was involved in local politics and served as a marshal for the District of Columbia. His wife of 44 years, Anna Murray, passes away and he remarries Helen Pitts, a white woman. Although his decision to marry Helen stirred controversy, Douglass continued to advocate for the rights of African Americans and even women. He supported Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony in their campaign for women suffrage. For reasons such as these we highlight Frederick Douglass’ achievements by composing books to convey his daily struggles and triumphs, teaching it in our classrooms, and continuing to secure the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness of those Douglass, Lincoln, and many others fought so hard to free.
When Liam Kofi Bright was five years old, he spent a long time obsessing over the difference between a big number and a small number. Eventually, Bright decided that anything over four was big and anything below four was not. When his mom asked him, “What about four?” he started crying.
Landscapes of Literature: Frederick Douglass at Cedar Hill
At the Washington, D.C. home where Frederick Douglass lived from 1877 until his death in 1895, his relationships to language and to the landscape continue to come alive.
In the home known as Cedar Hill, bookcases line several walls of thelibraryaround the heavy wooden desk where Douglass read and wrote.
A walkway from the back of the house leads to a cozy windowless retreat, where Douglass kept a second desk filled with books and paper to write, read, and quietly contemplate. He called the structure the “Growlery,” a title used by characters of several Dickens novels to describe “a retreat for times of ill humour.” In the comfortable sanctuary of his Growlery, Douglass was able to study and write in peace. Once draped in vines and surrounded by fragrant shrubs, the structure is also thought to have fulfilled Douglass’s desire to work in a natural setting.
Photograph taken in the 1930s looking south from the historic house. Frederick Douglass’s Growlery (left) and barn (right) are visible, and a clothesline stretches between two trees over the backyard (NPS / Frederick Douglass National Historic Site).
Every year, the NPS hosts an oratorical contest in the auditorium at the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site for students in grades 1-12. The goal of the contest is for students to experience the same transformative power of language that Frederick Douglass experienced as a young man.
This year’s contest will be held on December 6-7, 2019, and students from across the country are invited to apply.
The house and surroundings of Cedar Hill, Frederick Douglass National Historic Site (NPS).
Additional image information can be found in NPGallery.
This month, we are exploring a few of the NPS cultural landscapes associated with writers and writing. Catch any you missed or add your own favorites with #literarylandscapes
“Thus all [Frederick Douglass’s] life he had to fall back upon what was fundamental in his experience, remembering that the key to his basic identity lay neither in books, nor in white men’s minds, but in the slavery-scars on his back.” - Ralph Ellison, in our list of the very best sentences we’ve published in the past 100 years.
That is what enslaved woman Harriet Bailey affectionately called her son Frederick. Frederick, who was born into slavery as well, did not know when he was born. His enslaver did not allow him to ask questions about his age, much less his date of birth. After escaping and finding freedom, he was able to piece together that he was likely born in February 1817 or 1818. But the exact day still eluded him. Remembering his mother and the happiness he associated with the Valentine’s Day holiday, Frederick picked February 14th as the day he would celebrate his birthday.
This Frederick is none other than Frederick Douglass (1817 or 1818-1895), the famed Black abolitionist and social activist whose extensive resume included orator, editor of The North Star newspaper, and United States Ambassador to Haiti. Because of Douglass’ chosen and reclaimed birthdate, Valentine’s Day is also celebrated as Douglass Day.
The showcased images come from the first edition of Douglass’ second autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855). The engraved frontispiece is after one of his striking daguerreotype portraits.
Images from: Douglass, Frederick. My Bondage and My Freedom. New York: Miller, Orton & Mulligan, 1855.
(image:John Brown. An address by Frederick Douglass, at the fourteenth anniversary of Storer College, Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia, May 30, 1881, p. 28)
Juneteenth is a celebration commemorating the abolition of slavery in the United States. On June 19, 1865, General Gordon Granger arrived in Texas to announce the total emancipation of slaves. In honor of Juneteenth this year, we would like to share the Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. In this autobiography, Frederick Douglass discusses his life as a slave, events during the Civil War, and his connection to the anti-slavery movement.
“There are such things in the world as human rights. They rest upon no conventional foundation, but are external, universal, and indestructible. Among these, is the right of locomotion; the right of migration; the right which belongs to no particular race, but belongs alike to all and to all alike. It is the right you assert by staying here, and your fathers asserted by coming here. It is this great right that I assert for the Chinese and Japanese, and for all other varieties of men equally with yourselves, now and forever. I know of no rights of race superior to the rights of humanity, and when there is a supposed conflict between human and national rights, it is safe to go to the side of humanity. I have great respect for the blue eyed and light haired races of America. They are a mighty people. In any struggle for the good things of this world they need have no fear. They have no need to doubt that they will get their full share.
But I reject the arrogant and scornful theory by which they would limit migratory rights, or any other essential human rights to themselves, and which would make them the owners of this great continent to the exclusion of all other races of men.
I want a home here not only for the negro, the mulatto and the Latin races; but I want the Asiatic to find a home here in the United States, and feel at home here, both for his sake and for ours. Right wrongs no man. If respect is had to majorities, the fact that only one fifth of the population of the globe is white, the other four fifths are colored, ought to have some weight and influence in disposing of this and similar questions. It would be a sad reflection upon the laws of nature and upon the idea of justice, to say nothing of a common Creator, if four fifths of mankind were deprived of the rights of migration to make room for the one fifth. If the white race may exclude all other races from this continent, it may rightfully do the same in respect to all other lands, islands, capes and continents, and thus have all the world to itself. Thus what would seem to belong to the whole, would become the property only of a part. So much for what is right, now let us see what is wise.
And here I hold that a liberal and brotherly welcome to all who are likely to come to the United states, is the only wise policy which this nation can adopt.”
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