your dad becomes president. your dad comes in later that evening and that he was pulling a lasagna out of the oven. dear member what she said? >> she said you know, you're president of the united states and i'm working in the kitchen. something is wrong with this picture. there's something wrong here. i'm still cooking. i don't think she really cooked much after that. [inaudible conversations]

>> good evening, everyone. welcome to new york historical society. a miniature public programs here and it's always a joy to welcome you to your robert h. smith auditorium. tonight's program, "frederick douglass: prophet of freedom" is a lecture andhe biography for fl 2018. the lecture was founded in honor of great intellect and passion. passion specifically for biography. i'd like to think he describes being in her entire family with us tonight for their generous support of this lecture series. [applause] as well for their ongoing support review two of these a year. keep an eye out this spring for the next lecture and biography. i'd also like to thank her recognize alan showed in all of our chairman councilmembers with us tonight for their great work and support. i also just learned we have former governor -- assistant --

david patterson with us tonight. would like to recognize and thank him. [applause] so welcome. tonight's program will last an hour and also clues a question-and-answer system. it will be written questions on no cards and as you're coming into the auditorium you may ever see the no carter pencil. if not we're going to have staff going through throughoutwr the program and we will either give you a cardrd or be around latern to collect them as well. there will be a former book signing following the program with david blake will take place in our gallery. the books will also be for sale out there and we do hope you join us for that. so alas were thrilled to welcome david w. blake back to the society tradition to be one of the esteemed trustees his class of 1954 professor of american history and the gildern lehrman center for bravery camera

systems and abolition at yale university. author or editor of a dozen books which have been awarded the bankrupt prize in the frederick douglass prize and among many others. our moderator this evening is chair of the center for african-americans that he is in william s. professor of religion and african american studies at princeton university. the author of several books including democracy, how race the american soul and accidents in the nation in early 19th century black america. we ask you silence any cell phones. please join me in welcoming our guest.lc [applause] >> how are you all doing?

good, good. welcome. >> thank you, eddie for doing this. >> this is mye, pleasure. it's a blessing. let's jump into this, is that okay? a wonderful book. so, david, talk a little bit about the archive that informs this magisterial texts. you have access to send aid that most folks just simply haven't had access to. >> yeah, i had no intention of ever writing the full life of douglas. i had done a dissertation on douglas in 1989. i had done his two autobiographies, and better.

except for giving talks on douglas' narratives to teachers. i went to savanna georgia about 10 years ago to go talk to teachers and douglas' narrative because they were teaching it. apologies to some of you who may have heard this story. but my host at the georgia historical society said there's a local collectorer who want to meet you and have lunch and i said that's fine. that collector was walter evans, who is now a dear, dear friend and to whom this book is in part dedicated. he took me over tote his house d got on his very us to mobile table, his douglas collection. walter deserves a moment here. every speak about that again falter as many moments as they can. he's an african-american retired surgeon who grew up in segregated savanna, king arthur

education, went to the michigan medical school part just in detroit for dirty sun years, which gave us a lot in common because i grew up in flint, michigan. although he has season tickets to the tigers and i could never afford them. at any rate, walter start collecting them in the 1970s. african-american rare books, manuscriptsn- and art and in his remarkable house in savanna is a library of rare books. name any book in the african-american tradition he has a first edition. but his house is just chock full of archive boxes. this step should be at the library of el and we have tried hard for him to sell it and if you're watching, they're still waiting. [laughter] but what it consists of

innocents are about 10 very large family scrap books kept by douglas'on son. also a lot of family papers and letters, f photographs and a lot of other tidbits mostly from one other collector. when i saw that collection that was one of those moments in history and reallyth had such luck, where i realize, i don't want to do this. i don't want to do this. i'm going to do this because if i didn't try to work with those materials, somebody else would. a lot of other douglass scholars have now gone there. most of them had introduced walter. but if you want to work with his collection, you spent time on his dining room table and i've spent several spring breaks they are. but without that collection i

would have never done this and particularly that collection opens up. the aging douglas, the picture you're douglas and that is not the douglas people generallytr know. so that new archive is the reason i did this. but the douglas archive is extraordinary in many forms. i also had access to some missing issues with frederick douglass' newspaper, which the yale libraries, but they bought them in someme cases. but there've always been missing issues. he published a newspaper for 16 years and i got access now to i believe every issue.

>> so it is this extraordinary account, one of the most important american voices of the 19th century. and we get a story from radical outsider to political insider. it is a story that in some ways reveals a powerful and flawed human being, and all too human douglas in some ways. what think about this in terms of three categories. douglas says profit, douglas says writer and douglas as politician. talk a little bit about his prophet of freedom. >> i first have to say that he has read this book.

and it's a little scary. we had some time on the telephone,te too. he said i can hardly remember. if you put the word profit in your title, you better be ready to defend it. it's a big, big word. all through these years of working on douglas, you can't miss it in his rhetoric he written and spoken. but he is deeply steeped in the bible and particularly in the old testament. now that is not surprising in the 19th c century. many people were, most intellectuals were. his first reading in serious ways comes not just in reading thet bible, but reading with preachers in the streets of baltimoree. but douglas adopt dead isn't rocket science.

he adopted the great story of the old testament. the idea that the temple of jerusalem. this is what the great prophet jeremiah, isaac and ezekiel were all saying, that the temple had tod be destroyed, that the peoe had become so sinful, so poison. and in that reckoning, many of beem would die. some of them would be sent into exile. some of them would probably survive the exile. some of them might even find a promised land. douglas took that great story of exodus along the way and he did what so many americans dead, especially african-americans. eddie has written about this. it's one of the reasons i wanted him to interview me. he tookk the exodus story and he applied it to his own people own life and especially

to his country. now, it makes than that times sort of a blood thirsty orator. it makes them unpleasant to lead in the midst of the war. hea advocates the death of evey white southerner. words that were not pleasant. to say the least. the confounding language of the old testament. he was able to find language that times to explain and historical condition, to explain and irony, to explain something terrible out of which there might be a possibility. it sent me in the course of working on this book to some theology friends, theologian friends i i should say. some of them even be here.

who told me, read so-and-so. my good friend, richard rabinowitz said you better read robert alter his talents though. i was trying to teach myself about the hebrew prophet. the prophet douglas was so adept at not just quoting, but paraphrasing amusing. i came to realize from the great theologian who wrote a book called the prophet among other books, that a prophet is sometimes that person in our society, in our lives perhaps from earth the religious world, sometimes more from the political world, not from both at the same time, who said sometimes speaks in octaves the rest of us can't hear.

but we have recognition from it anyway. the prophet is often the writer that has been shattered by some cataclysmic experience and therefore can shatter. in his 20 years as a slave and burned into his soul and i think scarred him psychologically. i can't prove that. all you need to do is dip into one or another were many speeches. if that's not a prophetic work of rhetoric, i'm not sure any american ever wrote one. it's the rhetorical masterpiece of american abolitionism. it is a classic jeremiad defined as that kind of rhetoric, that

story that calls the people back to the altar, back to their cause, back to their principles, back to their proper way or face damnation. the fourth of july speeches like a symphony in the middle movement is horrible. so there are many places and douglas is life in the oratory and in his writing when you can begin to find these elements of the prostatic. was he always self-conscious about? no. i don't know of any instance where he called himself ae prophet. hello i'm here today to be your profit. he writes about that. a real prophet never tells you he's a prophet, but it's going

to hurt shoe while he teaches you. douglas said that over and over again. it doesn't mean he's always right by any means and it doesn't mean he's always prophetic by any means. a special the older douglass who struggles with contradictions and conflicts. >> so when you think about young douglass and his voice, what is this relation? there is a sense in which there is part of this story that you tell is this ongoing act of self creation and douglass' life. we have good young douglass and african-americans of these and you can just see the fire in his eyes. you can see a.

that intensity has something to do with his rage against the peculiar institution. the kinds of moral stridency, but then you tell a story that in the midst of this there is this insistence on douglass and his sense of self possession alongside. tell me a bit about that. >> well, and douglass or divert himself into existence publicly. he's 20 years a slave in maryland, eastern shore, maryland and then baltimore. he escapes in 1838. he spends three years in massachusetts working of all kinds is menial jobs. pn melville were part of the same year amounts of scholars have tried to have them meet.

it is just not there. but it doesn't mean i didn't years another graph on that chapter. when melville calls for paul but i thought that's another graph. he begins to also preach. he's 20, 21 and 22 years old. he's just out of slavery. he's not perfectly formed by any means. asme an orator or a thinker or anything. who is at 22. but he gets discovered. the proponents of william lloyd garrison's approach to ending slavery, which was moral persuasion.

garrison was a genuine radical, believedn immediate to them, which means ending slavery now and not waiting for some gradual plan over decades or generations. he was a religiously driven radical abolition. he also had some principles or tenants that were very difficult for frederick douglass and for that matter a lot of other black abolitionist to follow. such as strict nonviolence, such as strict non-politics. that is you do not get involved in political parties because political parties were complicit with slavery. they were dirty institutions. you hadco to get your hands diry in politics. douglass is going to take time to leave that behind, but he's going to learn politics is no point now. he loved william lloyd garrison. he was a mentor figure, father

figure to some degree, particularly for young man. that's one of the first things you need to know about frederick douglass. he barely knew his mother and never knew who his father was. although he knew he was biracial. that's about all he could concludede. but the garrison on the ends were first abolitionist home. he w once called them his churc. he said they're my church, my community. once they discovered him and took him to nantucket to do his first public speech in august of 1841 where he still was this trembling kid. he said i should get my shoes as i got it beat for the first time. but they they discovered him and make young man with a voice. not just an orator's voice, but a story and he was already a

good storyteller and he had been preaching from the text on sundays when it was his job to preach. he knew how to do that. but the next three and a half years they hired him. he went out on the road. in mind and body because that is the way he came to feel about it. day yen, day out, month in, month out, all across the north. eventually all the way to ohio, brack speaking tours. he would tour with groups come usually abolition. the first three to four years he traveled especially with abby kelly, and steven foster. theyn were married. and some others. garrison himself at times. this is weird douglass cut his teeth as an orator or any toe

the line of gary sony and principles. politics, nonviolence, et cetera. at the end of this period, by 1845 he decided to sit down in the winter of 1844, 45 and essentially write up all the stories he's been telling out of the circuit. what he did in these first speeches was two things. he told his own tale. he told his story as a slave, which is all there in the narrative. episode after episode. glittery seed from ms. sophia and all the beating and the terrible with names that he witnessed and experienced. but he also perfected his favorite speech, at least at first. what was known as the slaveholdereh sermon. the slaveholder sermon was

frederick douglass treading on those passages of the bible were said to be obedient to your masters and he would get up and he would mimic a proslavery ministry. he would prance around the stage, going to his southern accent. the hypocrisy of christian slaveholding and he was a star added. he got to the point where ever he would go, they always work -- the system was they does have a resolution to speak to. two or three resolutions you spoke to or against it. douglass would start to speak to the resolution, but the audience would start saying fred, do the sermon. he would say all right and blake and -- break into the slaveholder sermon. he kept doing that kind of speech for years and years. but this is where he cut his teeth as a radical abolitionist employee and the only weapon they had, which was language,

word, powerful word spoken and written of course the newspapers. >> so there is this sense in which douglass cutting his teeth and in some ways drawing on the language of the bible, that he carried with him -- the sense in which she understood the importance of rhetoric. >> but he understands the way the moral role of rhetoric. >> in order must have a moral position in re chuck the heart of the audience and not just the mine. >> a biography of so many ways seems to be organized along the lines for each autobiography

kind of constitutes an anchor. just as a rageful douglass and then you have the life and times and so in each moment as you say he's writing himself into existence. there is a way in which douglass understood the power of language.. so he's doing this. he's running around the country. he is having some issues with them. there is beginning to be a break but he's fine-tuning his. so talk a little bit about douglass as this literary figure. >> yeah, there is a letter he writes to the editor of the first journal he first published in the name. it was in the late fall of 1844 just as he was starting to write the narrative. he writes this first little essay, very short.

he says in the letter, to write forut a book. like wonder if i could write a book. all of us who are writers had that moment the first time you imagine i'm going to write a book. how about that. or maybe i will write a book. and, clearly he wanted to put this for his narrative because he wanted to say this is who i yam. this is my story. don't doubt me.my i'm real. he wanted to name his oppressors, which he did. the douglass came a language when he wasua a slave and he continued over and over again in his free life after he escapes from slavery. you have to remember he was 20 years as slave and then he lives another seven years as a fugitive's lathe until his british friends bought his

freedom. but he is always in those years, the 1840s in the 1850s and i'd say even into the civil war years trying to perfect his writing style, has cropped. thing aboutle douglass and there's lots of flaws this man had even with his writing. all writing is flawed. he wrote in so many different genres. he wrote autobiography. 1200 pages of autobiography as he had suggested. his life is punctuated. the first one in 1945, 27 years old. the second 110 years later when he's 37 in the middle of the 1850s. my bondage and my freedom, 350 page autobiography which is a much more political book in the mid-to the great crisis of the slavery.r he also lives a a lot more and s

given a very different kind of abolitionist. in 1881 some of the old man's summing things up, life and times of frederick douglass is a text that is full of name dropping. the presidency is advised and on andd on. on the other hand, it is chock-full. it's asc gold mine of just stuf, stories, events, details. but we know about his relationship with john brown especially down to the eve of the attack of harpers ferry, he revises the third one another timen in 1892. the autobiography is one form, but he mastered the short form political editorial. the political essay for his newspaper. he could write in a different voice.e. he could go after political issue whether it's canvas, nebraska, whatever it is an just kind of mail it in 400li words.

he also wrote these elaborate speeches as text. the fourth of july speech is a masterpiece of writing first. there is a letter where he said i worked for three weeks on this. i work longerwo on this than anything i've ever delivered. and you can tell. if i could get them in a room and ask him one of my 100 questions i would ask him did you read before that speech? come on. where arem, your notes? and then, he wrote a novella. he'd been part to sing not already. he's called the baroque slave based on a slave named madison washing 10 on the ship the creole. the real event. there's a fair amount of poetry.

he is a prose poetry writer. he had at times magic with metaphors. my friend, great historian jim mcpherson wrote anan essay calld how abraham lincoln when the civil warr with metaphors. i wouldn't say douglass won the civil war with metaphors, but certainly inin the night teen century in a way of capturing a moment or dilemma sometimes in the metaphor that he withdraw from the bible or shakespeare or just make it up. so he becomes a skilled writer who never is completely satisfied with this, which i think is true of most writers are >> this is a wonderful passage on page 29 that i just wrote yes

this is blades grows. all great autobiography is about loss, about the hopeless, to retrieve and control a path that forever slips away. memory is both inspirational, method and subject. to live with or without. >> not bad. >> be good, right. and the way that she'se constantly returning. we talked about this earlier. i'm obsessed with james baldwin in his constantly telling that story in order to possess it because it is an act of self creation. so he's renderingis this narrate in order to in some ways constituted health.

this is what we mean by writing into existence and so you have this moment where emerson, and douglass is the embodiment. he is witness and you quoted passage in this moment whether this gorgeous chapter on douglass family again, where you give an account through their back and forth and what emerges these two figures become absolutely central to the second founding of the country and of course at the end, the old man still is trying to find the day he was born. andy is trying to write life and times. there's something going on here.

there is something remember that she's all too human. powerful than flawed. as much as the archive allows. >> probably a little more than the archives. in effect to the experience- of slavery and i'm paraphrasing this part of divisibility for affection. the way he loved. >> yeah, i speculate on not and others have. douglass' guard by this life as a slave child, teenager and young adult. he experienced every kind of

brutality slavery could throw what you, especially the emotional birchall and he said that many times protect in his mind was s much harder than protect in his body. he was beaten savagely by one owner and one overseer. he witnessed all kind of savage beatings at the white house plantation. he even witnessed the owner of doublee plays. the guy who cut the cary childs. he's like seven years old witnessing this. there are many elements -- many moments where memory is so important in trying to understand douglass. i didn't think this ahead of time when i was writing the

first chapters, what do we remember of our childhood? how do we find prompts to remember childhood? he is re-creating that childhood over and over in hiss life and he's telling us over and over how terribly important it was. also for his humane sensibilit. this white woman who fed him biscuit out the window if he would sing for her. until she stopped teaching him to read. and he talks about how an angel could become a devil. but believes he cultivates a childhood memory to understand what it did to him is remarkable if you go and read -- no offense

i tried to read a bunch of child psychology and i read a whole bunch and sub bullets free douglass. but then later in life is all about memory. the memory of theou civil war in trying to preserve the emancipation is. he's trying to make the country remembered the emancipation is the greatest result of this war and the greatest responsibility of the nation. but it's also trying to line up his own life. anyone in here who's ever tried to write anything in the genre of memoir and knows you're trying constantly to figure out what goes in and what doesn't go when and what can i trust in my memory and what can i not trust? what in my memory makes a great tory, what does that. but it's also true at the end of the day that douglass seems to

have believed he had one great story to tell and he just kept doing it. at the same time he wrote great beaches on political issues. he wrote great speeches on legau issues. but the tale of his own life is always witty searching for and i think only three or four months before he died he writes one of thomas' son, one of its owners although we don't know. and he said do you know when my birthday was? i can't find it. it's another way of asking is your father myou father. if some of you know it turns out he didn't die for another ninene

months. he went back to the easternhi shore four times and eventually with pop or rap being tall. any hasidim are you my father. he didn't get a yes, which is one of the reasons i don't think it was his father. but the numbers.string to figure out his paternity. he knows he has white kinfolk. he had black end quote he didn't know and they found him later in life. he not only had four surviving adult children but 21 grandchildren and he had siblings who either adopted him or he adopted them out ofin slavery. all of them end up at cedar hill, the big house in washington at one time or another. it became a place in the 1880s and 1890s.

above -- 14ll died in infancy or teenagers. it was not uncommon, they lost four or five in one month of f diphtheria. over and over. never writes about any of that in the biographies of course. >> so we talked about douglass the prophet, and douglass the writer. douglass the politician, political pragmatist. the one who jealously guarded his position as the black leader. the old man who was famous. talk about this douglass. >> he didn't like the young rivals either. douglass loved being king of the

hill and those who try to knock them off, he did some ugly things they are. douglass learns politics in the crucible of the 1860s. as the carousel and the incumbent he was supposedly political parties alone. he was a very political man. he constantly quoted a man said don'tca vote. it's got to be a bit of a contradiction to some of his followers to say the least. the douglass 1850, 51, 52, 53 said the slavery crisis especially overexpansion is exploding across the country in the political parties are tearing themselvesun apart. he comes to realize this is a hugely political question is also moral question. heo also gets a lot of moral solution is he became quite inpatient with moral persuasion.

you keep trying to change a person's heart forever and ever, at some point you may just need to bend someone to change the law if you can. he loved politics, that he only shouldered at into the 1850s and at first he considered himself a free soil her. he goes to the first free soil convention in 1848 and called him a speak. he didn't quite know what to do with the first republican party in 1854 although he was kind of excited aboutre it. it's certainly against the expansion of slavery and he begins to develop. i spent two or three chapters in this. he begins to develop a kind of hard-earned pragmatism about the craze says over slavery. he realizes he may have to make relationships here with people you do not like those principles

you can't stand, but they actually can make things happen. from 54 to 56 and in 1861 lincoln runs is causing the south korea's the enemy of my enemy is my friend. he also came slowly to trust some republicans like salmon chase, charles sumner, he doesn't know linking yet. he followed lincoln in the lincoln douglass debates a lot. they had quite an exchange and i was lucky to have a fellow who was studying not. turns out stephen douglass and frederick douglass had quite an exchange with each other. anyway, he becomes a republican for sure because the republican party was waging war against

slavery. as many in this room know, douglass was a ferocious critic in the first year, year and a half of the war because they were not moving against slavery. it was protecting fugitive slaves were trying to. with the preliminary pants omission proclamation, the final proclamation of january 1863, douglass not only changed his tune. the civil war had now become but lincoln had not wanted it to be calm in lincoln's famous words he did not want it to become a remorseless revolutionary struggle, but that's exactly what it had become. the rest of douglass' life after

1864, he would campaign every year to the republican candidate for president. the republican party would decide which states to send him to if they were pocket in a state he would be sent there. there were other sections of the country they thought hee would work well in upper new england and summaries in indiana. a swing state in 19 century, folks. douglass would campaign week after week for hayes, garfield, et cetera. sometimes they'ds, wonder why because the republican party was really changing in abandoning his cause of the emancipation civil rights black voting rights the 13th, 14th and 15th amendment. but he never gave up on the republican party and just around

that out a bit, it's quite an issue today like all great questions in history that matter, this has a huge legacy because today, lusciousbe call them libertarian, the republican right, the cato in the two plus two appropriate douglass because he was a staunch proponent of self-reliance. raising themselves by their own institutions in their own hard work and their own thrift and so on. but every black leader in the night can century to speak of was a proponent of self-reliance. sometimes the ways this gets portrayed today in political discussion, the way douglass gets appropriated now drives me a bit crazy because to do that you have to ignore his entire life as a radical abolitionists. but it's good news because douglass has become a little bit

like abraham lincoln. everyone wants to have him on the side. everyone wants to claim douglass on our side. but would douglass do with this. what would they think of the me to movement. [inaudible] >> i thought that might not come out tonight. >> before we go to questions, you do something. you are so attentive to and not. say a word about anna. .. .. they fell in love in

baltimore. he escaped from slavery in late august, 1838. and anna lasted the extraordinary bravery to pack her bag and waited for a letter. when frequentr frederick got -- when frederick got to new york city and found himself safe within 48 hours he wrote a letter back to baltimore. we don't know who wrote the letter to. but whoever he wrote it to, they took it to anna. she took the seam three trains and same three ferries and was in new york in the same 38 hours to join him. she was free. born free.

and if they had been caught, we wouldn't have either known about either one off them. she was his help mate for all of those decades. the mother of all of his children. she remained illiterate all of her life and it was a problem. the most of literal famous black man in the world was married to an illiterate woman to could not be part of that professional intellectual life in meaningful ways. we know i what we know about he. not entirely, but largely from what the children wrote about her. one of the things in the walter evans collection in savannah are two narratives written by two of

the sons. we always had the one the doubtered wrote, rosetta. "growing up in the douglass home." in every stage i try find my way into anna's life. there are no documents that anna wrote. no letters. but there are lots of little testimonies about her. she kept the account books. she kept the bank book. she did numbers. when he didn't. and she provided a home. and never -- if you get to know douglass at all, you will sense this. he was desperate to make and preserve a home because he had never had one.

that's what she represented to him. >> let's take question s from the audience. i heard frederick douglass was biased against native americans. is this true? >> yes, biased is one of those big words. yes. he trafficked in some indian stereotypes. for example, when he sometimes would make a case after the civilet war in particular for te uprightness and ambitions of black people. the white people should stop worrying about black folk. let them own lands and be educated. they want to be americans. he would often prot trot out the image of the vanishing indian.

like saying the indian wants top wrap himself in a blanket and towalk off into his hills. but the black man wants to own a company. it's a 19th century stereotype that was all over the country. i had students reading a chapter of this in a seminar. it's jarring when they read it. they want douglass to be an tadvocate for indian rights. they want him to be against the reservations. but he thought they were the proper thing. >> the relationship between douglass andso grant. >> it's very important. it never got very close. int 1868 douglass had been a distant admirer of grant.

grant appoints him to a commission in 1870-71. the santo domingo commission which is now the dominican republic to discuss with the leadershipca of the santo domino whether the u.s. with annex it. the grant administration was trying to annex santo domingo. he was a secretary for the commission. he took run of his sons along with him and he kept a diary on this 3-month trip to the caribbean. he went swimming in the surf and almost drawnd, according to the diary. douglass became and expansionist after the civil war.

lots of abolitionists did. this is 1870-71. the klan is raging everywhere. reconstruction hasn't fallen apart yet. doug has argued the united states is now a an abolitionist country. we are the nation of emanicipation and we should ex port.nd we should take the 14th, 15th, 16th amendments out into the world and give them our ideas. this is not unfamiliar to us. but when you come back to the santo domingo commission, grant invited the regular commissioner to the white house for a special dinner and didn't invite douglass. but at least from a distance he

admired grant. in 1876 he wanted grant to run again. he didn't trust the other candidates. despite the scandal. esthere were so many grant scandals. he wanted republicans to win. he didn't think grant could lose. but they never had a truly close relationship, which has always made me triply fascinated with the speech douglass gives in 1876 as his second greatest speech at the unveiling of the lincoln monument, he grant was sitting in the front row and grant pulled the rope to unveil that. i went to grant's papers to see,

what did grant think? >> nothing there. he didn't say a word about that. he should have. >> how did the rights of jim crow impact douglass?ow >> the rise of jim crow in the early 19th century had an impactmp on him. douglass got thrown off numerous trains. he got jim corrode by hotels, taverns, trains, stagecoaches. it got to be a source of humor for him at times. but later we often talk about the rise of jim crow, douglass lives to see it. you mississippi passes the first disfranchisement law. douglass lives to see the

beginnings of bitter segregation. he didn't live to see its fruition into the early 20th century. but nothing by the as far as i can tell, surprised him. base had experienced jim crow over and over and over. though he always referred to being jim crowed or a form of segregation, legal or otherwise, as another variation of pro slavery ideas. he would just call it the pro slavery vision reconstructed. the pro slavery tradition brought back to life. for him it was the resurrection of slavery. >> the wonderful phrase he uses. the manifestation of racism as a

national faith. >> he called it a national faith. it had been. it's also why the civil war and emanicipation was so important. because he hoped it killed it. >> how important was douglass for getting the women's movement. >> he was the only male speaker. the only black participant who called the seneca falls declaration of rights. that he was there, that he gave his preference to this event was huge. and he was from that time on, and even before, always a women's rights man. he wrote essays entitled. i'm a women's rights man. he's also a patriarch in manyrc

ways in his private life. that didn't make him that you be usual for some reformers and radical abolitionists. but he was all in on women's suffrage and women's economic rights until the 14th and 15th amendment. and he has a terrible breakup with elizabeth cady stanton and susan anthony. they by any measure misbehaved badly in the way they treated douglass with racist epithets. not just aimed at douglass, but aimed at black men. they were fed up. they didn't want to wait any longer. they wanted women in the 15th amendment. but everybody understood if women's suffrage would have been put in the 15th amendment it

never would have passed. but for stanton and anthony you can put it in or you can't have your country back. it's one of those moments in his life when he has to make choices about this political issue or that strategy or that strategy. and it's often the horns of a dilemma. >> why did british supporters help douglass buy his freedom and not american abolitionists. >> two reasons. he spent about 19 months in the british isles when he's in his 20s. he gets treated like a hero most of of the time in ireland, scotland and britain. and to this day in ireland they practically made him a patron saint. he only lived four month there

and they have two monuments to him. crazy. but this british friend began to realize -- first there were a lot of british abolitionist friends who tried to coax him to stay in england, move his family to england. adopt england. he actually thought about it. but he couldn't. his cause was here and his oufamily was here. the fact that he would move anna and four small children to england made no sense. so the richardson sisters from new castle with the effort to raise money and all the negotiation and letter writing and bought his freedom for $73. >> . and -- for $730. and douglass would not return to the united states until he had official document in his hands

thats he was free. the other part of the answer is the garrisonnians were very strict moralists. they said to purchase the slave's freedom is to be wcomplicit with slavery. douglass said thank you very much, i'll take my freedom. it's betterr than not having it. >> one last thing before we end. douglass is telling his story. in so many ways douglass' story isd america's story. what should we take from this in this currents moment we find ourselves. what does this story teach us? >> you didn't tell me you were going to ask that. history is never over. history not only has cycles, it

has terrible surprises. and when you think you have won a victory, watch out. he learned that in his life over and over. he's one of those rare reformers who lives to see his cause triumph in the middle of his life in his 40s and almost beyond his belief, as late as 185 and 1859, abolitionists had little reason to believe they would live to see slavery destroyed. but it happened. and he lives 30 more years to see that very victory, the causes, the constitutional amendments, the civil rights acts all but wiped out or erased by the supreme court, by terrorist violence, and by a politics that could not and

would not preserve it. the trajectory of his life covers most of of the 19th century. it covered the greatest transformative event in our history of the civil war, and it covers that great story from slavery to freedom which we still in so many ways are living. every way we are fighting over how to define that 14th amendment. what equality before law means. we are still fighting over the supreme court. oops. >> thank youal very much for joining us. [applause] >> before you leave, i want to remind you we have the book for sale. david will be signing books out

there. there is so much left to cover. and i also want to make sure i make an important correction fromom my intro. i had just learned before that david paterson is here. he was the 55th governor of new york from 2008 to 2010 fan new york state's first african-american governor. we are so thrilled to have had him in the audience and twhrild to have all of you as well. thank you all for joining us. >> 2019 is about to begin. btv is about to begin.

we'll kick off the new year with best-selling author gerald corn. we'll discuss all of his books including his most of recent. "rugs roulette." so authored with michael is cover. sunday january 6, mr. corn will join us live to answer your questions. this is book tv.org for more information. live on january 6. . [inaudible conversations]