Feature
By Catherine Salgado, 2-20-24
Feb. 20, is the anniversary of the 1895 death of a great American: Frederick Douglass.
The self-educated orphan slave who became an acclaimed orator, the poor child who overcame racism and oppression to be honored by more than one president and many other important figures during his life. Frederick was truly an American success story, an admirable freedom fighter.
Douglass, having escaped slavery himself, spent his life working for slavery’s abolition and then civil rights. Not long before his death, Abraham Lincoln greeted Douglass warmly with the comment, “Here comes my friend Douglass…There is no man’s opinion that I value more than yours.” Douglass convinced Lincoln and others that black Americans deserved not just emancipation from slavery but civil rights, as free blacks originally had in some states when the Constitution was first signed—only this time, black civil rights should be protected in every state. Republican President U.S. Grant appointed Douglass Marshal of the District of Columbia and Minister to Haiti during his term in office, the highest federal positions a black American held in the 1800s.
Below are Frederick Douglass’s own words when speaking to a black school (the source is an 1895 eulogy in Kate Field’s Washington):
“I once knew a little colored boy whose mother and father died when he was six years old. He was a slave and had no one to care for him. He slept on a dirt floor in a hovel, and in cold weather would crawl into a meal bag head foremost and leave his feet in the ashes to keep them warm. Often he would roast an ear of corn and eat it to satisfy his hunger, and many times has he crawled under the barn or stable and secured eggs, which he would roast in the fire and eat.
That boy did not wear pants like you do, but a tow linen shirt. Schools were unknown to him, and he learned to spell from an old Webster’s spelling-book and to read and write from posters on cellar and barn doors, while boys and men would help him. He would then preach and speak, and soon became well known. He became Presidential Elector, United States Marshal, United States Recorder, United States diplomat, and accumulated some wealth. He wore broadcloth and didn’t have to divide crumbs with the dogs under the table. That boy was Frederick Douglass.”
Leftists now either falsely claim Douglass’s legacy for their own or viciously vilify him for being too white (i.e. emphasizing personal responsibility, patriotism, and education—as if whites ever in history had a monopoly on such goods!). We, however, must spread the real history and celebrate a truly great American, Frederick Douglass.
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