Frederick Douglass for Kids

by Nancy I. Sanders

  Having little spare time for reading, Douglass was determined to read the newspaper in whichever way he could. He frequently nailed the pages of the newspaper to a post near where he worked. While he pumped a heavy beam up and down to work the bellows at the foundry, with the furnace’s heat blasting over him, he read the newspaper’s articles. It breathed fire into his soul.

  “The Liberator was a paper after my own heart.”

  —Frederick Douglass

  For the first time, Douglass truly gained an understanding of what it meant to be an abolitionist. He learned about the abolitionist movement that was sweeping the northern United States, as well as England, gathering supporters who wanted to bring slavery to an end. He read articles written by famous abolitionists and grew familiar with their names, their passions, and their purpose. Above them all rose the voice of their staunch and fearless leader, William Lloyd Garrison.

  Nantucket Antislavery Convention

  Each week, Frederick Douglass read through the freshly printed pages of the Liberator’s current issue. Each time an antislavery meeting in New Bedford was announced, he attended with great interest. Douglass sat in the crowded rooms, intense with the desire to hear the words of the speakers denouncing slavery and its wicked practices. At these meetings, he listened. He learned. He applauded. But he was always just a member of the audience. Douglass admitted, “I had not then dreamed of the possibility of my becoming a public advocate of the cause so deeply imbedded in my heart.”

  This was about to change.

  During the summer months of 1841, plans were underway to hold a large antislavery convention in Nantucket. A nearby island off the shore of New Bedford, Nantucket was a prosperous whaling community that was home to many whalers or seafaring men, such as Absalom Boston, and their families.

  Hearing about the upcoming abolitionist meeting, Frederick Douglass decided to attend. Since the day he had escaped from slavery three years earlier, he had not taken a rest. “The three years of my freedom,” Douglass explained, “had been spent in the hard school of adversity.” His hands were toughened by the constant work. He exhausted himself each day in rough and heavy labor. Douglass had devoted himself to earning a living to support his wife and children.

  Absalom F. Boston (1785-1855)

  Many African Americans worked in the whaling industry. During Frederick Douglass’s time, one of the most prominent of the Nantucket whalers was Absalom Boston. A ship’s captain who went on to become a wealthy businessman, Absalom Boston was active in politics and fought for the integration of Nantucket schools.

  Courtesy of the Nantucket Historical Association, 1906.0056.001

  He decided to take a much-needed rest and go to the antislavery convention in Nantucket. There, among the crowd of a thousand men and women on August 11, 1841, Frederick Douglass felt his heart burning with the cause so many voices were speaking about—ending slavery. At that moment, he was singled out and approached by a very famous abolitionist named William Coffin.

  Surprised that Coffin knew his name, Douglass learned that Coffin had attended his church in New Bedford. It was there that Coffin had heard Douglass preach. Now Coffin urged Douglass to speak here at the antislavery convention.

  Frederick Douglass was shocked. He? A fugitive slave? Speak to a crowd with mostly whites in the audience? Unheard of! A fugitive slave had never done such a thing. Even at an antislavery convention!

  Coffin insisted, however. He invited Douglass to step forward to the platform and speak a few words to the crowd.

  Moved by the emotions that flooded his heart and inspired by the memories of his recent days of bondage, Douglass finally agreed. Overcome with excitement, he approached the platform and began to speak. “It was with the utmost difficulty that I could stand erect,” he remembered, “or that I could command and articulate two words without hesitation and stammering. I trembled in every limb.”

  Yet speak he did. Instantly, something like a bolt of electricity shot through the crowd. Douglass said, “The audience, though remarkably quiet before, became as much excited as myself.”

  A New Career

  After Frederick Douglass finished his speech and stepped down from the platform, William Lloyd Garrison stood up to take his place. Stirred deeply by the testimony of Douglass regarding his life as a slave, Garrison declared, “Patrick Henry of revolutionary fame, never made a speech more eloquent in the cause of liberty, than the one we had just listened to from the lips of that hunted fugitive.”

  The crowd roared its approval. No fugitive had ever spoken before at a convention like this. Always before it had been white abolitionists or free blacks speaking out against slavery. For the first time in American history, a fugitive himself dared to speak up and describe what slavery was really like.

  When that evening’s thrilling program finally ended, Frederick Douglass was approached by yet another man. John Collins was the general agent of the Massachusetts Antislavery Society. Collins urged Douglass to join the society’s ranks as a speaker.

  Frederick Douglass refused. How could he support his family if he quit working and agreed to speak at antislavery conventions? How would he know what to say, uneducated as he was? But most importantly, how could he hide from Hugh Auld and escape the slave hunters if he agreed to become a public speaker? No. He could not work for the society.

  John Collins insisted. No matter which objection Douglass raised, Collins would not listen. “Mr. Collins was not to be refused,” Douglass admitted, “and I finally consented to go out for three months, supposing I should in that length of time come to the end of my story and my consequent usefulness.”

  William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879)

  Great antislavery leader that he was, William Lloyd Garrison insisted his voice be heard, and he was. Best known as editor of the abolitionist newspaper the Liberator, his words were read by countless people in America as well as abroad. His passionate followers included Frederick Douglass, who was his friend, fellow speaker and frequent traveling companion for many years.

  From the collection of the Rochester Public Library Local History Division

  A new day dawned in the life of Frederick Douglass. A new era began in the history of America.

  A Holy Cause

  The initial three months Frederick Douglass signed up to speak for the Massachusetts Antislavery Society quickly turned into a new career for this man who was still legally a slave. His master, Hugh Auld, still owned him and was still hunting Douglass, to capture him and return him to slavery. Like a whirlwind, Douglass swept through towns and villages across the northern states, speaking and enlisting members for the society. He often accompanied John Collins. Other well-known abolitionists frequently joined their meetings and shared the speaker’s platforms with them. Because it was already his own passion, Frederick Douglass gave himself over completely to the great and holy cause of his new friends—to join together as one voice and bring an end to slavery.

  During this time, William Lloyd Garrison became a mentor to Frederick Douglass. Now in frequent companionship with the editor of the Liberator, the paper that introduced Douglass to the abolitionist movement, Douglass hung on every word Garrison spoke. Douglass embraced Garrison’s philosophy. Frederick Douglass himself became known as a Garrisonian, a member of the group of men and women who publicly approved of Garrison’s passionate views on antislavery, women’s rights, nonviolence, the church, and politics.

  “The cause was good, the men engaged in it were good, the means to attain its triumph, good.”

  —Frederick Douglass

  The admiration and respect Douglass held for Garrison were mirrored in Garrison’s glowing support of Douglass. As editor of the Liberator, Garrison frequently published articles and speeches showcasing his new friend’s rise to fame and influence. Everywhere Douglass spoke, people rose up to admire his testimony, his intelligence, and his powerful oratory skills. In his paper, Garrison frequently printed these words of praise and fervor over thi
s new member among the ranks of abolitionists.

  Room to Grow

  In his first months of speaking with the Massachusetts Antislavery Society, Frederick Douglass simply shared his personal testimony of his life as a slave. He was careful, however, with the details he gave. “The only precaution I took,” Douglass explained, “at the beginning, to prevent Master Thomas from knowing where I was, and what I was about, was the withholding my former name, my master’s name, and the name of the state and county from which I came.” Douglass was still a fugitive. His life was in danger. Slave hunters and kidnappers relentlessly searched the northern states to capture runaway slaves and return them to the South.

  Famous Orator

  Everywhere he went, Frederick Douglass amazed listening audiences with his powerful voice and passionate message. Men and women sang his praises as one of the leading orators of the day.

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton declared, “He stood there like an African prince, majestic in his wrath, as with wit, satire, and indignation he graphically described the bitterness of slavery and the humiliation of subjection.”

  A listener from Buffalo acknowledged, “I had never heard a fugitive slave speak, and was immensely interested to hear him. He rose, and I soon perceived he was all alive. His soul poured out with rare pathos and power.”

  In his Sketches of Lynn, author David Newhall Johnson stated, “He was more than six feet in height; and his majestic form, as he rose to speak, straight as an arrow, muscular, yet lithe and graceful, his flashing eye, and more than all, his voice, that rivaled Webster’s in its richness, and in the depth and sonorousness of its cadences, made up such an ideal of an orator as the listeners never forgot.”

  Quickly, however, Douglass needed room to grow. He grew bored repeating the same story night after night.

  John Collins urged him to continue to repeat his testimony. “Let us have the facts, we will take care of the philosophy,” Collins said.

  People in the crowd repeated to Douglass, “Let us have the facts.”

  Even his close friend William Lloyd Garrison repeatedly whispered to him as he walked up to the speaker’s platform, “Tell your story, Frederick.”

  SUGAR WATER

  When Frederick Douglass visited a community and spoke, he sometimes lectured for hours at a time at several different meetings in the same day. At times his voice grew hoarse from so much speaking. To soothe his scratchy throat, he drank a simple remedy of sugar water.

  In his autobiography, Douglass recalled a particularly trying day when he was scheduled to speak four times in one New England town. By the middle of the day, he was tired and hungry, yet no hotel would serve him and no home offered him its hospitality. Waiting for his last speaking engagement to begin, Douglass walked around the town in the chilly, drizzling rain of a New England northeaster. Seeing his predicament, a politician who was well known for his sentiments against abolitionists surprisingly invited Douglass into his home.

  Aware that the senator’s wife felt disturbed by his presence, Douglass said gently to her, “I have taken cold, and am hoarse from speaking, and I have found that nothing relieves me so readily as a little loaf sugar and cold water.” He found that her demeanor softened. “With her own hands,” Douglass remembered, “she brought me the water and sugar. I thanked her with genuine earnestness, and from that moment, I could see that her prejudices were more than half gone, and that I was more than half welcome at the fireside of this Democratic Senator.”

  Materials

  cup cold water

  tablespoon sugar

  Spoon

  Stir the sugar into the water with a spoon until it is dissolved. Drink the sweetened water slowly, allowing it to soothe your throat. Did it work?

  However, Frederick Douglass could not go on just simply describing the wrongs he had experienced as a slave. “I could not always obey,” he explained, “for I was now reading and thinking. New views of the subject were presented to my mind. It did not entirely satisfy me to narrate wrongs; I felt like denouncing them.”

  New Companions

  As Frederick Douglass grew in his ability to speak out against the evils of slavery, his circle of friends and companions also widened. During his first years of speaking on the lecture circuit, he was often seen with greats such as William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Samuel J. May, and Charles Lenox Remond. A singing group, the Hutchinson family, toured with them. The Hutchinsons provided music at the meetings, stirring the crowd to join in by singing popular antislavery songs as well as songs the Hutchinsons wrote.

  As he traveled back and forth to attend his many different speaking engagements, Frederick Douglass made it his personal duty to bring an end to segregation, the practice of separating blacks from whites. For example, he was determined to do all he could to help end segregation on the Eastern Railroad.

  Douglass used the railroad frequently. The Eastern Railroad had been a source of much trouble to its passengers by forcing blacks to ride separately in a “Jim Crow” car, or train car where blacks had to ride. The railroad had been written up in various publications, including the Liberator, for how its conductors and brakemen bullied African American passengers and forced them to move from their seats to the degrading car at the back of the train. Not only was it humiliating for blacks to be separated from other passengers, but the accommodations in the Jim Crow car were not as nice as those in the rest of the train.

  One day Frederick Douglass bought a ticket and sat down in a seat on the train. When the conductor noticed Douglass, he ordered Douglass to leave. Douglass calmly replied that he liked the seat he had chosen and didn’t care to move. With this, the conductor called several brakemen to come. Frederick Douglass reported with a note of humor he often displayed, “When they took hold of me, I felt my hands instinctively clutch the arms of the seat where I sat, and I seemed to be very firmly attached to the place.” To remove Douglass, the brakemen had to lift him up and carry him off, seat and all.

  “I have neither been miserable because of the ill-feeling of those about me, nor indifferent to popular approval, and I think, upon the whole, I have passed a tolerably cheerful and even joyful life.” —Frederick Douglass

  After this incident, the Eastern Railroad refused to stop at Douglass’s hometown of Lynn, Massachusetts, for several days. But so many people protested, and Douglass continued to fight so diligently, that eventually the Eastern Railroad stopped this practice. Blacks and whites could then travel through Massachusetts by train as equals.

  Charles Lenox Remond (1810-1873)

  Before Frederick Douglass escaped from slavery, Charles Lenox Remond was the most famous African American orator of his day. Remond was a Garrisonian. A staunch abolitionist, he became the first black hired as a speaker for the American Antislavery Society. In 1840 this organization selected Remond as one of its delegates to the World’s Antislavery Convention in London.

  Remond and Douglass frequently traveled together and often shared the speaker’s platform in their commitment to help bring slavery to an end. Remond’s sister, Sarah Parker Remond, was also a well-known abolitionist of the day.

  Courtesy of the Boston Public

  Library, Print Department

  Forerunner of the American Civil Rights Movement

  One hundred years before Rosa Parks helped start the civil rights movement by refusing to move from her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, Frederick Douglass fought against segregation everywhere he went. He sat down in the front seats on trains, joined the dining tables on steamships, and attempted— many times successfully—to help integrate transportation systems wherever he traveled. One time when Douglass, riding unnoticed inside a streetcar, observed that a black man was being ordered off at the other end of the car, he called out, “Go on! Let the gentleman alone! No one here objects to his riding.”

  Frederick Douglass sat down in segregated restaurants. He joined boycotts of establishments that treated blacks unfairly. After the Free Soil Conven
tion in 1852, a local hotel prepared dinner for 300 guests but would not allow African Americans to eat in its restaurant. All the delegates from the convention joined Douglass in a boycott and dined at a different hotel. He also worked successfully to integrate public schools in his area.

  At one time, upon meeting a man who displayed obvious prejudice, Douglass said, “I suspected his trouble was colorphobia, and, though I regretted his malady, I knew his case was not necessarily dangerous, and I was not without some confidence in my skill and ability in healing diseases of that type.” His brave and heroic efforts set the stage for the American civil rights movement over 100 years later.

  The Latimer Case

  It was during this time that news from Boston reached the ears of Frederick Douglass and his speaking companions. In October 1842 Frederick Douglass joined with Charles Remond and others to speak to audiences around the clock against the arrest and imprisonment of a fugitive named George Latimer. The reason for his arrest? Documents had been produced stating that Latimer was the runaway slave of a man in Virginia.

  Latimer was locked in a Boston jail. Douglass and Remond insisted this was an outrage! How could fugitives or free blacks be safe in the state of Massachusetts as long as incidents like this were allowed to take place? Massachusetts wasn’t a slave state in the Deep South, yet its officials and its jails were aiding in the capture of slaves.