in my district that's 12,000 students. secondly, it's the critical shortage area of teachers to the profession, and filling all the positions that are necessary to provide our students the best classroom environment and the most qualified teachers, highly qualified teachers, especially in the areas of math and science and even technology. >> voices from the states on c-span. next on american history tv, historian david blight, director of the gilder-lehrman center for the study of abolition, presents a talk, frederick douglass, discussing douglass's work as well as how we think about him now.

the maryland historical society hosted this 90-minute event to mark the bicentennial of the birth of frederick douglass. >> there are few people in the history of this great country who have left as indelible a mark as has frederick douglass. his extraordinary legacy continues with us today. born into slavery in 1818 in maryland, douglass waipaved they for generations but he did it peacefully and with great eloquence. his writings are as relevant today as they were in the 19th century. this month we celebrate the bisten yal b bicentennial and birth of this great man and we welcome david blight, who is with us to discuss the achievements and enduring legacy of his life and work. david w. blight is a teacher, scholar and public historian at yale university, he's professor of american history joining the faculty in january 2003.

he is director of the gilder-lehrman center for the study of slavery, resistance and abolition. blight organizes conferences, working groups, lectures, the administering of the annual frederick douglass book prize and many outreach programs regarding the history of slavery and its abolition. he's currently writing a new full biography of frederick douglass to be published later this year. blight's newest books include annotated editions of douglass's second autobiography, who speaks for the negro and the monograph, american oracle. blight is the author of a slave no more, two men who escaped to freedom including their narratives of emancipation. blight is also the author of race and reunion, the civil war in american memory published by harvard university press in 2001. which received eight book awards including the bancroft prize,

abraham lincoln prize. he has a ph.d.. he was elected as a member of the society of american historians in 2002 and served as that society's president from 2013 to 2014. he also served on the board of advisers to the abraham lincoln bicentennial commission and is involved in planning numerous conferences and events to commemorate the civil war. he's received honorary doctorate degrees. in 2009, blight chaired the jury for non-fiction for the national book award. it is my great honor to welcome david blight. >> thank you, mark.

thank you all for coming out tonight on actually an ugly day in baltimore. it was rainy. but we got to go down to fells point and knock around. that was fun. i got to spend time in this archive, thank you to the archivists. thank you to charlie for that dinner last night. long, good historians' conversation. representatives and senators, the governor and all the rest here, i hear you have adopted frederick douglass in maryland. it's about time. it's a good thing. more than a good thing. there was a rumor a year ago that douglass might not even be gone. and those of us who work on him and there are a lot of historians who work on douglass often feel that way when we wake up from nightmares.

last year, i do teacher institutes in the summer with high school teachers, and i did one last summer on the life and writings of douglass and they ordered these online. by the end of the week everyone in the seminar had this teeshirt which you can all get. you can buy caps, douglass 2020. my students put one of my favorite quotes on the back which i will use later. my pen, my voice, my vote. that's the last sentence of douglass's my bondage, my freedom. i'm going to say several things tonight about this new biography. this is the cover. i brought a whole bunch of these postcards, my publisher gave me i think 2,000 of them, so i got to get rid of them. pick one up. you can order online already, apparently. you won't get it until september

but that's if i get the final edits done. i got to get home so i can get the editing done. i want to begin with two passages. this is going to seem like church for a moment. my apologies. move this clicker. there we are. one of the arguments i will be making tonight is that the bible, in particular the old testament, was extremely important to douglass. that's only one argument. i want to begin with two brief passages that he not only read but he certainly came to, how should we say, embody? first from jeremiah, first chapter, behold, i have put my words in your mouth two pluck up and to break down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.

note all of the dichotomies in there. to destroy and to rebuild. is at the heart of douglass's ideas, his heart, his story, the story of the coming, the fighting and the consequences of the civil war. douglass was a serious student of the hebrew prophets. but there's this line in genesis. almost everybody knows the story somehow. genesis 8, where it says and the dove came into him in the evening and lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf plucked off, so noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth. that's in the middle of the famous story of noah's ark.

i'm going to begin with a story that happened ultimately right here in baltimore, where douglass i think ingeniusly employed that noah's ark story but i want to begin with the background to it. i will get into baltimore. it will just take a few minutes. and i'm not pandering to you because we are in baltimore. this is simply one of my favorite douglass stories. i found a couple of incredibly cool things as a historian about this. the election of 1864, now, those of you who know your american history and that's most of the people here, will remember that that's lincoln's re-election, but there was nothing foregone -- there was no foregone conclusion that lincoln would win in '64. the war was in stalemate that summer, terrible stalemate in virginia and in georgia, in

particular, and in mobile bay, for that matter, where a great naval battle will be fought. it began in the previous winter, that election season, in the midst of civil war. no republic has ever held a general election -- had ever held a general election in the midst of civil war. how do you do that? no blueprints. where did you look that one up, in the constitution. it began in that winter when the senate actually passed the 13th amendment abolishing slavery. two-thirds, both houses get a constitutional amendment. the senate passed it but the house did not. there was no way to get a two-thirds majority of the house. but the 13th amendment that we now, of course, know was passed a year later in january of '65, was actually brought to congress

the previous year and it was the republicans' brand, an amendment to end slavery became the brand on the republican party. rightly so. they chose that. oh, my god, now they had to run a presidential election campaign branded as the party of abolition. that spring and summer and into the fall, the democratic party and of course, the parties have reversed a lot in terms of ideology so i don't need to explain that, do i? it's been most of a century since party of lincoln ceased to be the party of lincoln but that's another matter. anyway, the democratic party, white supremacist to its core,

ran a campaign, not just against lincoln but against emancipation. and against war weariness. war weariness was absolutely real in the north. all you need do is go look at that last section of what i found remarkable exhibit on maryland and the civil war which does not shy away from the horror of war and the problem of death. now, that summer and i will leave a lot out here, lincoln himself at times believed he would not be reelected or there was not a good likelihood of him being reelected, and for the second time, he met with frederick douglass at the white house, their second meeting occurs in august of 1864. the first meeting had occurred a year earlier in august of '63. the first time they met, douglass simply went to washington, stood in line at the white house and asked to see the president. the second time, it was at

lincoln's invitation. because he wanted to talk to frederick douglass, the most famous, most important voice or spokesman of african-americans, black america. he wanted to talk to douglass about this emancipation problem. he floated a kind of trial balloon on douglass. among other things, he asked douglass, this is abraham lincoln looking eye to eye in lincoln's white house office, eye to eye and lincoln asked douglass if he would be interested in setting up a scheme, a plan, to funnel slaves out of the upper south, as many as possible before election day, under the auspices of the army, but douglass would have to be the head of it and the recruiter of all these other agents, the scheme was douglass was supposed to rekrocruit a couple dozen ags to make this happen with the help of the army so lincoln's apparent idea was get as many

slaves behind our lines and legally free before george mcclellan wins this election in the fall and the democrats take over on a peace platform or negotiated peace platform with the confederacy. in effect, abraham lincoln looked douglass in the eye and asked him to be a legal john brown. frankly, there's some evidence of this, it's not hard fact, but i think douglass was just stunned. sure, he said, yeah. he didn't have a clue how this was supposed to happen. of course, he was saved from having to make it. douglass did go loam home to rochester, new york. he contacted all sorts of abolitionists, he was writing people, sending telegrams, lining people up to get involved in this scheme and there were a whole lot of northern abolitionists who had now been serving for more than a year as recruiters of black soldiers.

they had a lot of experience with some of this. but he never had to enact this plan. the plan was abandoned, as many of you know, because battlefield events changed the course of this election. particularly the fall of atlanta in the first week of september, sheridan's conquest up the shenendoah valley and the late august fall of mobile bay. these were huge turning points in the civil war. arguably the most, you know, you get into the parlor game, most furn turning point of the civil war which we fools love to argue about, it's become my favorite. maybe next year, i'll go back to saying antietam. anyway, he's saved from that plan but now the election campaign. douglass wanted to campaign for lincoln but the republican party

now painted again with its brand of emancipation, begins to back away. this is what happens in politics. we all know this. the republicans begin to sort of shy away from saying they're the party of abolition because the democrats are pillorying them with the most white supremacist, racist campaign ever run in american history until the next one. which was 1868, which was worse. they called abraham lincoln abraham africanos the first. they invented the term, we believe the very word race mixing was invented in the winter of 1864 in this claim by a democratic newspaper, "the new york world" that the republican party was running such a campaign, that its ultimate goal was race mixing.

they put out cartoons, they put out lithographs of balls being held in northern cities. so you got kind of a scared -- even william h.seward publicly backed away from abolition and said that may be just a matter of what the courts decide. that's always a resort for some politicians. we won't have to, the courts will decide. whatever that meant. the courts, of course, in america in the middle of the civil war, were the most discredited institution in the government because of the dredd-scott case. they wouldn't let him campaign for lincoln. they didn't want him on the stump. they will after the war and douglass will stump for every republican candidate from grant to the end of his life.

the republicans managed to narrowly win. now, before i do that, just briefly, douglas was the keynote speaker at a major black convention in syracuse, new york in the third week of october that fall, '64. 150 some delegates from most of the states including some southern states. this is the old tradition of the black convention but they hadn't had one in something like nine years. douglass gave a stunner of a speech at that convention. he told them everything was at stake in this election, everything, he said. not just their freedom, but the survival of the nation, the survival of an american civilization. it was an existential moment, douglass said. his audience believed him. by the way, at that convention, i'm going on too long about it,

but at that convention, henry garner and john mercer langston, this incredible generation, some of them douglass' generation but most of them now a younger generation, rivals of douglass, they had all kinds of ceremonies. up on the stage at that convention, they brought out the battle flag of a black regiment that had fought at port hudson and they sang the battle hymn of the republic which had been written two years earlier. they sang john brown's body and they sang hymns. imagine. and they're praying. that lincoln and the republicans might win because if they don't, all bets are off. on election night in rochester, i found one incredible newspaper clipping about this in a scrapbook collection i will tell

you about in a minute. the scrapbook collection is the reason i did this biography. otherwise i wasn't going to write it until i bumped into an unbelievable private collection of douglass material. anyway, i found this report, it was actually a reminiscence by a man who said he had been a poll worker on the night of the election. 1864, november 8th. he remembered he was the one who put frederick douglass -- he wrote this like 18 years after the war -- i was the one who put frederick douglass' ballot in the box. he probably was. but then he remembered walking, he knew douglass and he walked back into the center of town late that evening to go to the telegraph office to follow the election returns, and he said they're walking into the center of town and four drunken white thugs came out in the middle of the street and challenged douglass with the "n" word over and over. the guy says douglass, put up his fists and said come on,

let's have at it. douglass was a fighter. you only need to read the narrative to know that he had fought with his fists before. now, according to this eyewitness account, the drunken white thugs scurried off into a dark alley and got out of the way, then he quotes douglass saying oh, i suppose the boys were just upset they didn't like the result of the election. i don't know what douglass said that night. this eyewitness probably is making up some dialogue he had with douglass. but what an anecdote. douglass says come on. anyway, the following sunday, five days later, douglass did what he had done so many times in rochester. he went to speak at spring street a.m.e. church. black church in rochester. douglass had a sort of regular gig there on sunday afternoons for years. he would do whole series of

lectures there, like six series on a topic. he went to spring street on the sunday right after the election, packed church, mostly black audience. and he began the speech with the story of noah's ark. he recited some of genesis. then he told the story of noah at one point, sends a dove out of the ark and the dove comes back and the dove had the olive branch in its bill. noah decided he would send the dove out again and the dove didn't come back. noah took the tarp off the ark and lo and behold, the land was green. the world had revived. douglass converted that metaphor into what had just happened with the re-election of lincoln.

douglass went to the oldest rebirth metaphor in western culture. the survival of noah's ark. all right. one week later, on the 16th of november, douglass came back to baltimore. told you i would get to baltimore. he came back to baltimore for the first time ever since he escaped in 1838. he had never been back. well, actually, he had taken a train through here to get to washington but had never gotten off. on november 1st, lot of you who are maryland historians know this, maryland held a referendum to vote whether to be a free state, and they voted, narrowly,

i had the numbers here. it's amazing. 30,174 to 29,799, that's a number all marylanders ought to know. 60,000 votes were cast. the yes vote won by 400 votes to make maryland a free state. you don't need me to tell you maryland was a very divided place, but, and it wrote a free state constitution quickly. douglass decided i'm going back to baltimore. maryland's a free state. he came back to baltimore with, in effect, kind of paparazzi in tow for his homecoming, and he went right down to fells point i believe it was on dallas street to the bethel a.m.e. church. the big bethel a.m.e. church today which is on i think druidd avenue? drew hill.

druidd hill. sorry. sorry about that. got to get things right locally or you're in trouble. sorry. but down at the original bethel a.m.e. church which is possibly where he had met ann an ma maris wife, in one of the churches, he did attend when he was a slave here, he took the pulpit. packed house, they couldn't fit everybody in. when he arrived at the door, he's met by a woman named eliza mitchell, who was his sister. she was two years older, born a slave like him. she had lived all of her live in talbott county, eastern shore. she had had, oh, i'm forgetting now, seven, eight children. she had named one of them for douglass. the last name. douglass. we are told she remained largely

illiterate the rest of her life but she knew a lot about her famous brother and she came, what is it, 60 miles from talbott county? how far is it? 75 miles, thank you. my friends are the force of frederick douglass in easton and talbott county. anyway, eliza walked all the way up here to meet this guy. it's not clear whether he even knew her. but they embraced, there are press reports of this. he walked arm in arm with her up the aisle of the church to the pulpit. he was surrounded on the pulpit by american flags. and he gave a speech. again, beginning with noah's ark. but there was a variation this time. he told them the story of noah's ark. these audiences, everybody knew the book of genesis.

he told the story of noah, the dove and the dove comes back and noah sends the dove out again and the dove didn't come back. then douglass says the fact tha. i am the dove. the oldest rebirth metaphor in western culture, and he put himself right in the middle of it. and it worked. sometimes if we put ourselves in the middle of a biblical metaphor, you know, you can't get away with it, right? no. always a bad idea comparing yourselves to, you know, god's work or something. but that's what he did. anyway. all right, we got to baltimore. in his speech at the dedication of the national museum of

african-american history and culture down on the mall in washington, which everybody now knows about, the dedication was september 24, 2016. douglass was not there. but president barack obama was, and he delivered a remarkable speech, what he called a, quote, clear-eyed view of a tragic and triumphant history of african-americans. he spoke of a history that is central to the larger american story. and one that is both, these were obama's words, contradictory and extraordinary. he likened the african-american experience to the infinite depths of shakespeare and scripture, the embrace that obama of truth, as best we can know it, is where real patriotism lies. are you missing obama? don't answer that. naming some of the major pivots

of the country's past, obama wrapped his central theme here, this contradictory and extraordinary history, he wrapped his central theme in a remarkable sentence about the epic of the civil war. we buttoned on our union blues, said obama, to join the fight for our freedom. we have railed against injustice for decade upon decade, a lifetime of struggle and progress and enlightenment that we see etched in frederick douglass' mighty lionine gaze. his speechwriter nailed that one. douglass lenene gaze. we can get that gaze up here a little better. not moving. oh, there. the gaze in some photos, you

can't quite see the eyes, although this is a favorite photo. a favorite for a lot of people. it's january 1863, right after the emancipation proclamation. douglass sitting with a book, i don't know what the book is, although certainly thick enough to be the bible. couldn't be "life in times" because he didn't write it yet, but that's a stunner. they're all stunners. a little older, the white care comes in. the linene gaze. everybody probably knows that douglass was the most photographed american of the 19th century. he got to lay out that gaze a lot of times. 162 or 163 photos of douglass exist, and he just, according to the intrepid authors and editors of the recent book called

"picturing frederick douglass", i always like to mention them because it's an amazing book, and they found a lot of new photos. he just barely surpassed george armstrong custer as the most photographed american. i mean, aren't you glad? maybe graham is fourth. that's a little blurry. sorry. i wanted the old douglass on the cover of my book, and i sent my publisher three examples of the older douglass. i just come to adore the older douglass. well, sometimes adore and sometimes not. but then this is the younger douglass. that's even -- that's a photo he used or a lithograph of it on a narrative, his first

autobiography. and then there's this, which i used on the cover of my edition of bondage and freedom. this is 1857 or '58 photo in a kansas city museum. the nelson atkins museum. and zoey found this. they had never displayed it. i think she photoed it. my god, i mean, amazing. at any rate, it's not moving, but that's a good place to stop anyway. the lionine gaze. how americans react to douglass's gaze as he appears in textbooks now and posters and sort of everywhere. how we gaze back at it, more importantly, how we read, appropriate or engage douglass' legacies, in some ways informs how we use our past and who we

are. douglass' life in writing emerged from nearly the full scope of the 19th century. he's representative in so many ways of the worst and the best of the american spirit. he constantly probed the ironies of all of those american contradictions over slavery and race. few americans used shakespeare and the bible. the story of his people as much as douglass. and the slave who became a lyrical prophet of the ideas of freedom, natural rights, and human equality. obama may have been channeling in some ways douglass in that dedication speech. knowingly or not, so do many of us today. now, you don't need me to

recite, not here, where douglass came from. the eastern shore, of course. 20 years as a slave. about nine years as a fugitive slave. and from the 1840s to the 1890s, he became not only the abolitionist and the editor, but an order of almost unparalleled stature and the author of three autobiographies that are classics of that genre. that alone is a pretty good accomplishment. as a public man, he began his abolitionist career two decades before the civil war over slavery that he openly welcomed the war, that is. douglass was born in a -- sorry, a backwater of the slave society of the south, at least that's what he ends up calling it at

times. just as steam boats appeared in bays and on american rivers, but it changed human mobility and human consciousness and changed his life. especially that railroad. he died after the emergence of electric lights, the telephone, and the invention of the phonograph. it is frankly amazing that he never got recorded. that we know of. it could still appear some day. it might be sitting in this building that hasn't been found, in a box. who knows. there is one amazing letter in his library of congress papers. in the last year of his life, the fall of '94, he goes to dinner one night in washington at the home of a man named mr. anderson. i didn't quite figure out who the mr. anderson was.

somebody may help me. i don't know. but he goes on to write a thank you letter to mr. anderson, which is amazing, because mr. anderson had a phonograph, and he played it for douglass. he played the voice of a reverend who douglass knew, and he hears the voice of a friend of his, and he goes back and writes this letter. he called the phonograph a divine creation. he went nuts about it. there's a line in the letter where he says is it possible the human voice could live forever? i mean, you read that and you realize he's talking about himself. been in order for 63 years. anyway, he didn't get recorded. why didn't somebody record him? anyway, he loved modernity and technology, by the way. fascinated with steam ships. how this one was faster than that one and so on. now, it can never really be measured although i started to

try to do this and i quit. he may have also been along with mark twain the most widely traveled american public figure of the 19th century. in sheer miles. does that matter? no. probably not. who cares, right? just numbers freaks. but by the 1890s in sheer miles and countless numbers of speeches, he had few rivals as a lecturer in the golden age of oratory, and it's likely that more americans saw douglass speak than any other public figure of his time. it's impossible to figure that list out, but i don't know -- i mean, with all these digital humanities centers appearing in universities now, somebody is going to count this baby at some point and probably give us a list. he struggled with the pleasures and perils of fame as much as anyone else in his century as well. with a possible exception of

ulysses s. grant and p.t. barnum. grant had a terrible problem with fame. did he ever. now, the order and writer lived to see and interpret douglass, black emancipation, to work actively for women's rights long before they were achieved, to realize the civil rights triumphs and tragedies of reconstruction, and to witness and contribute to america's economic and territorial expansion in the gilded age. and he favors american expansion. he lived to the age of lynching and jim crow laws, when america collapsed into retreat from the very victories and revolutions and race relations that he had helped to win. he played a pivotal role in america's second founding out of the civil war, and he very much wished to see himself as a founder and a defender of the

second american republic. and i was so pleased to see that on the statue of douglass that they have now unveiled at the university of maryland, one of the inscriptions on it is a founder of the second american republic. i almost cheered when i saw that. douglass was many things, though. and it is a set of really paradoxes and opposites that make his story so attractive to biographers and i think to many people, readers, one hopes. as well as a lot of constitch w wnsys. i mean that literally. there's an old saying about abraham lincoln, calling him in a 1955 essay, and the line is simply getting right with lincoln. you know, choosing your lincoln and using lincoln for your cause, getting on the side of

lincoln. what would lincoln think? what would lincoln have done? we kind of do that with douglass now to some degree. that's both good and maybe not. he was, listen to these opposites. he was a radical thinker and a proponent of classic 19th century political liberalism. at different times he hated and loved his country. he was a ferocious critic of the united states and all of its hypocrisy. but also after emancipation, he became a govern bureaucrat, a diplomat, and a voice of territorial expansion, especially through the caribbean. in other words, american empire. he strongly believed in self-reliance and he demanded an activist interventionist government at all levels to free slaves, defeat the confederacy, and protect black citizens against terror and

discrimination. douglass was a serious constitutional thinker, and few americans have ever analyzed race as both a concept and a reality with more poiniancy than this mostly self-taught genius with words. he was a radical editor, writer, and activist, but also a hard-earned pragmatist who had to learn how to get the best deal possible. douglass was jim crow more times than he could count but loved the declaration of independence and especially the reinvented u.s. constitution fashioned in reconstruction. all of those things were true, it just depends on when you look. he fought against mob violence, but he believed in certain kinds of revolutionary violence. that one kind of depends on

whether it's the john brown story. in his own career, he heroically tried to forge a livelihood with his voice and his pen, but fundamentally, i would argue, was not a self-made man. an image and a symbol he touted in a famous speech and through which the self-made man idea modern american conservatives have adopted him as a proponent of their brand of individualism. he truly believes women were equal and ought to have all fundamental rights, but he conducted his own personal life sometimes as a patriarch in a difficult marriage and while overseeing a large, often dysfunctional, to put it mildly, extended family. context, this is history, context and timing are often everything. as james baldwin, the great writer put it, early in his

life, in 1948, and he here is casting sentiment and celebration to the side. baldwin said, quote, frederick douglass was first of all a man, honest within the limitations of his character and his time, quite frequently misguided. sometimes pompous. gifted but not always a hero. and no saint at all. if you love james baldwin, you read that and think, ooh, ouch. but baldwin's unabashed bluntness there is a good place for a biographer to begin to make judgments from a source. but so are the interpretations of, for example, a very different kind of writer. the former neoconservative turned neoliberal journalist and political theorist michael wynn. in a book widely read book in 1995, he rejected both a -- this

was the '90s, if any of you remember the '90s. he rejected both a leftist kind of multiculturalism and a conservative self-help individualism and called for a new american nationalism that he termed in a very awkward phrase, multiracial mixed race trans america, and he decided douglass was the mind. multiracial mixed race trans america. and he calls more than once in the book, frederick douglass, quote, was the greatest american of all time. depends on where you look and who's writing it. indeed, the old fugitive slave has become in the early 21st century a malleable figure, not at least of which by current republicans who have claimed

douglass, at times quite ahistorically, and i'm happy to debate that, as their own by elevating a single feature of his thought, and he staunchly argued, make no bones about it, black self-reliance. but they have done this at the expense of a long term enduring radicalism in douglass' thought, at least some of them do. and i remember vividly at the unveiling ceremony of the statue of douglass in the u.s. capitol in 2013, so chosen by the district of columbia because every state and now the district gets two monuments. that's why jefferson davis is there. another matter. congressional republicans at this huge ceremony, when they unveiled the statue, it's an act of congress. all of the leadership was there.

ba boehner, pelosi, mcconnell, on and on. andio biden. they all spoke. they all had like an eight-minute staff prepared speech. but the fun part of it, if you found it fun, is part of the event, the republicans all got up and talked about what a great republican douglass was. and many of the members of the house were wearing these giant buttons around that said frederick douglass was a republican, or maybe is. i don't know. i don't remember. i don't remember. but they were wearing these things, and they were proud. high fiving old freddy d. but all the democrats got up and their argument was, douglass had always been in favor of home rule for the district of columbia. and actually, he was. there's plenty of evidence from the 1880s, he favored home rule and statehood for the district. so weirdly on the surface, at

least, they're both right. but anyway. getting right with douglass. the book i've written tries to do what i suppose any good biography does, to try to find all these complexities and the whole of his life. but never to side step his essential radical voice. douglass was and is a hero. there's no way around that. he has been all but adopted as a national figure in ireland, scotland, and britain, and maybe some other nations. careful what i say about scotland right now. his narrative is read all over the world. he's appeared in countless murals, satirical political cartoons, 21st century works of fiction. lots of works of contemporary fiction now has douglass as a

cameo character or a main character. i could go through them if you want. i especially love the way he gets used in the recent book called "half of a yellow sun" by the nigerian writer. if you haven't read that book, douglass is kind of a star in a strange way. i'll leave it there, but you can ask me later if you want me to explain it. he's appeared in paintings, of course, here it is again. this is one in annapolis, i think i heard, which i have not seen yet. i have to go there. poetry, every african-american poet of the 20th century had to write his or her douglass poem, and some white poets. the sheer complexity of his thought and life is what makes him an icon. held in some degree of commonality. he was courageous and possessed

a truly uncommon endurance of racism. as he also delivered one ferocious critique of it after another. he wrote so many words that will last forever. his literary genius ranks with many of america's greatest writers of the 19th century, and many literary historians and critics have been arguing that now for 20 years and more. but he was also vain, at times arrogant. always hypersensitive to slights. he did not take well to rivals who challenged his position as greatest spokesman of his race. although he also mentored many young black writers and leaders. he liked being on a pedestal, and he did not intend to get knocked off. douglass was thoroughly and beautifully human. above all, douglass is

remembered most for telling his personal story. the slave who willed his own freedom, mastered the master' language, sought to the core the meaning of slavery, both for individuals and for the whole nation. and then captured the multiple meanings of freedom as an idea and reality of mind and of body, as perhaps no one else in america ever has. now, this book i have done, it comes out of a lifetime of working on douglass, but i truly had put douglass out of my life permanently until about eight or nine years ago, and i encountered this private collection of douglass material. and the reason i did this book is that collection. i want to mention just briefly. i went to savannah, georgia, of

all places to hear yet another talk on douglass' narrative, a high school teacher, and my host there, who was from georgia historical society, said there's a local gentleman here, he's a collector and he would like to go to lunch. i said fine. at lunch, i met walter evans. amazing man. he took me over to his house. he owns one of those beautiful brown -- four-story brownstones in savannah. walter is an african-american, retired surgeon who grew up in segregated savannah but came north for education. and went to the michigan medical school, practiced as a surgeon in detroit for over 30 years. we had a lot in common because we're both tigers fans. but walter started collecting both manuscripts -- well, manuscripts, african-american manuscripts and art in the

1970s. and he has one of the finest collections of african-american art in private hands anywhere in the world. he's the executor of jacob lawrence's estate. but his manuscripts, he took me over to his house that day, and on his dining room table, he got out his douglass collection. and it was one of those moments when i actually, i think i cursed because it was like, oh. i don't want to do a douglass biography. i don't want to do a douglass biography, but somebody's going to have to. and almost nobody had worked with walter's collection. a few people had seen it, but no one had really done anything with it yet. now a lot of people have seen walter's dining room table. i have spent many, many weeks on -- actually, linda's, his wife's dining room table. she put the coffee on. she told me don't come before 8:00, stay as long as you want. the greatest research archive i

have ever worked in. because surrounding you on the walls of walter's house are about five duncans, the same landscape. and over in the foyer of the entrance to the house, there's a statue and a jacob lawrence on this wall. it's unbelievable. and that stuff should not be in his house. we have made him an unbelievable offer at the library at yale, and thus far, he thinks it's worth more than he does, but it ain't over until it's over. anyway, encountering that collection, and i'll say one more word about it, at the heart of it, although there were a lot of letters and family documents and even a couple little narratives by his children, are ten, depending how you count them, ten or so large family scrapbooks kept by douglass' son over the last third of douglass'

life. his daughter rosetta had a little hand in it, but what that collection makes possible is seeing into the last third of douglass' life. he lived until 1895, 30 years after the war, 30 years after emancipation. the post-war life, he becomes more exemplary and more symbolic and more of a bureaucrat, an older man, always lecturing. he makes money, he's a republican and all of that. we sometimes don't bother much with the old one. we love the young one. the heroic douglass. the man who escaped from slavery and wrote his narrative and shook the world. the older douglass is the man falling out of touch. no, he wasn't. i mean, yes, he did sometimes. but i find the older douglass now completely fascinating. walter's collection makes possible what i hope in my book will be the most thorough account of that last third of

douglass' life anyone has ever written. i'm going to name six -- i'm going to run through it, six themes. they're really questions. or problems, really. that i faced as a biographer and are the main themes of the book that i think any douglass biographer has to face. there are others. these are big ones. then i'll wrap up. first, douglass is a man of words. he's a creature of words. we know him because of his words. words were the only form of protest, the only persuasion, the only weapon, the only form of real power he ever had. and he became by a variety of means, it's partly mystery, but not entirely mystery, how douglass became or developed his amazing facilities, his language. in one way, the book i have

written, and i actually wanted to call it this, but my editor scratched this idea. i wanted to call it "douglass, the biography of a voice." my editor said, nope. too literary. a second big problem with douglass, the first one is it's about words. that's both a joy and a problem when you're writing about somebody, because you can use too much of his words. second, the autobiography. the first major problem that a biographer of douglass faces is the autobiography because they're always in the way. the subject you're writing about is always there in the way. hiding lots of things that you can't see. you want to grab your subject by the lapel and say, mr. douglass, please tell us more about anna, please tell us more about what did you say to your two sons when you recruited them into the

army when they were 19 and 20 years old? mr. douglass, what did you really think of lincoln? i have a list that goes on forever. and i have this imaginary seminar that we're going to have some day with douglass and he's going to be at the end of the table, and bad metaphor, but we're going to chain him to the chair, he can't get out. but what happens with douglass, soon as you get him sitting down, he just slithers out of the room. he's gone. because it's not going to be in the autobiography. the autobiography, there's three of them. 1200 pages in all. never trust anybody but themselves who writes 1200 pages of autobiography. he's trying to manipulate you. of course he is. all great autobiographers do that. now, so you gotta use them, and do you ever have to use them. but one quick thought on

autobiographies. anyone who works on douglass, on a figure who wrote so much memoir, you need to read about memoir. there's a zillion books about the nature of autobiography. some argue it's complete fiction. some say it's a form of history. some say it's self-right, life-right. so many books about writing memoir. one of my favorites, the last one i read about it, it's by a woman named mary karr. anybody know her work? she is a pretty wild and crazy writer, but an amazing writer. her voice is extraordinary. she's a woman who was institutionalized with mental problems, drinking and drugs. converted to catholicism. she's had many lives within her life, just like douglass did. she has written fiction and poetry and lots of things. she wrote this little book called "the art of memoirs." and she has an argument that at first you think, no, no, it goes

against everything you have read about memoir. she said the best memoirs are those that tell the most truth. no, no, wait a minute. memoirs by definition aren't really telling all the truth. they can't. but she goes on. she actually has her own favorite list, and she includes douglass. she's not saying it's all true, but more in the way of truth. there's a difference between accuracy and truth. and she says this. this is a quote. most memoirs are driven to their projects for their own deeply self-psychological reasons. that's not surprising. then she says, as yates said, mad ireland hurt me into poetry. so most of us, this is karr, have been hurt in memoirs.

when i read that, i thought bingo. douglass was hurt in memoirs. slavery, hurt douglass in his memoir, and his scar, and frankly, the rage in his mind, heart, and soul, were always there. he was lucky he was so good with words. he could expend that rage in language and not some other way. a third big thing was the book i have already demonstrated. it's douglass' grounding in the bible. i'll be quick with this. he first started hearing about the bible and reading about the bible, of course, while he was a slave, even on the eastern shore. especially on the eastern shore. she both hated and was fascinated by it. and then two white preachers here in baltimore, he names them, the churches and preachers

that really influenced him. he went to at least three different churches in baltimore, maybe more. and then when he got to new bedford, within the first year he's in new bedford, the local ame church had him preaching. this kid was good. only 20 years old, but take the pulp pulpit, kid. and he did. he rooted his own story and especially that of african-americans in the oldest and most powerful stories of the hebrew prophets. it's all over his writing. and especially the oratory. in america, the people had turned from or never embraced their creed or their gods. the american jerusalem, its temples and its system of slavery had to be destroyed. the nation had to face exile and extinction and bloody retribution. this is the story at the heart of the old testament.

and only then could the people and the nation experience renewal. and a possible new history. douglass was a living prophet of an american destruction, exile, war for its existence, and redemption. jeremiah and isaiah in particular, as well as other prophets, were his guides. they gave him his story, his metaphors, his resolve, and an ancient wisdom in order to deliver his ferocious critique of slavery and his country before emancipation and then his strained but hopeful critique or hopeful narrative, excuse me, of his future after emancipation. it is easy to call douglass, though, a prophet, to call something prophetic. in my book, i try to show why he

merits that lofty title. and he fits this description of what a prophet is, one of the greatest writers ever about the prophet. the great jewish theologian wrote a book, and it's a world classic called "the prophets." he wrote it first in 1955. he says this. quote, the prophet is human. yet he employs notes one octave too high for our ears. he experiences moments that defy our understanding. he is neither a singing saint nor a morealizing poet, but an assaulter of the mind. often his words begin to burn where conscience ends. douglass. words begin to burn where conscience ends. assaulter of the mind.

well, careful readers of douglass will stop at times. you have done it probably. and you kind of shutter at a passage he writes or you startle at it in recognition. whoa, did he say that well, or ooh, that hurt. sometimes our minds are assaulted. sometimes they're uplifted. in my book, i attempt at least to demonstrate how douglass came by his king james cadences as well as how he used the biblical story to break down and rebuild as jeremiah recollected in his own charge. and in douglass' case, of course, he's breaking down and rebuilding america itself. he succeeded and failed, as did the prophets of old. the fourth big problem is this, and it's especially the story of his post-war life, the last

third of his life. how douglass took these crooked paths from being a radical outsider, the abolitionist, through time and events to become a political insider. that's a great story, and we have seen it happen again and again and again through history, especially for african-american leaders. during the greatest pivot of american history, the civil war era, this man of language reaped great change to transform from a radical abolitionist into a republican party functionary. not an easy thing to do. these changes are historical, inextricably linked to events in time, not a matter of his moral growth or decline, and they provide a model for many other leaders, again, through time ever since. the outsider to insider story especially animates the second half of his life, and it became

one of douglass' most challenging psychic dilemmas. it had its ethical cost at times. he repeatedly faced the question of how uncompromising radicalism could mix with a learned pragmatism. to try to effect real power with how to condemn the princes and their laws and also influence and eventually join them. how do you square covenant with politics? the eternal dilemma of something called a democracy. and then the fifth problem that drives the book i have written, anyway, is the turbulent problem of republican pride in douglass' life. throughout, i tried to balance, as any biographer has to,

between these two registers of any person's story. the public man and the private life. and everything there in. throughout, i try to balance family with the famous man. and douglass' case, he married twice, of course, first to anna murray douglass, who he met here. a black woman born free in maryland, probably only three miles from where he was born. on the other side. who remained largely illiterate the rest of her life. but absolutely the center of his home and made his home through many dislocations and 44 years. and a second wife, of course, helen pitts douglass, a highly educated white woman, 20 years his junior, and a remarkably compatible companion by all accounts during the last decade of his life.

douglass sustained very important friendship relationships with two white european women, julia griffith from england, and julia osing from germany, both of whom became extremely important influences of differing kinds in his life. but most important, and we can come back to that, most importantly, douglas and anna had five children, four of whom lived into adulthood, but lanny, anna's namesake, died of course at 11 years old. between them, they produced 21 grandchildren for the douglasss. during the last quarter or so of the famous man's life, this entire extended family, which came to include even some kin and a variety of proteges and other hangers on, became financially and often emotionally dependent on the patriarch of a clan often in bitter conflict with itself.

douglass' extended family was not a happy family. there is no family photograph. douglass sustained exhausting health threatening lecture tours in his older years, three months at a time every winter. you go in the winter because the farmers farm in the summer and they're willing to come to lectures in january. he did those lecture tours in great part to support his extended family and a big house on the hill, cedar hill in washington, d.c., near the centers of gilded age power he could only partially penetrate. through his appointment, marshal of the district, recorder of deeds of the district, and an appointment to the santa domingo commission. he did get government appointments and they were very important financially, but the story of -- this story is douglass' own unique saga of

extended family, but it's also very modern. and many anecdotes about that i could use. he experienced at least two and maybe three genuine emotional breakdowns in his life. and both can only be explained by the treacherous character of this private/public divide. and finally, six. whenever you deal with douglass, you're dealing with multifaceted intellectual. a thinker. a mind. an editor, a writer, in numerous genres. memoir, short form editorials which he mastered politically. extended speeches, and one work of fiction. he wrote and spoke millions of words. his trove of commentary contains beauty, brilliant story telling, sermons, political stump

speeches, and assaults on the mind that are his legacy. and the essential reason we even talk about him. and roughly the last 40 years, douglass has been treated in our own time more and more by scholars as a political philosopher, a constitutional and legal analyst, an author capable of prose poetry, a proponent of the natural rights tradition, especially that by political theorists, a self-conscious voice of and about the nature of memory, a religious and theological thinker, a journalist. and the list could go on. today, douglass is taught and examined in law school, in history, english, art, political science, philosophy. in high school, graduate school, in community reading groups. and the book i have done, i try at all times and it's never simple to balance as best as i can the narrative of his life

with analysis of his evolving mind. give his ideas a central place in his unforgettable story. to end, but it is douglass' story i think why you're here. it's his story that lasts. it's sort of the idea. there's no greater voice in america's terrible transformation from slavery to freedom than douglass'. for all who wish to escape from an imprisonment of outward or inward captivity, they do well to feel the pulse of his life and read the words of this voice. and then go act in the world. go act. the final lines of the second autobiography, "my bondage and my freedom" in some ways his

greatest work and most revealing work, published in 1855, as the politics of the slavery crisis was embroiling the nation, douglass wrote, this is the last lines of that great book. he wrote that he would never forget, he said, his own humble origins, nor cease while heaven lends me ability, to use my voice, my pen, and my vote to advocate the great and primary work of the universal and unconditional emancipation of my entire race. as we look at douglass' lionine gaze in our own time, as we read him, as we teach him, we may recognize that such a universal work still continues. and we have to do it with our pens, our voices, and our votes. thank you.

[ applause ] >> that was brilliant. thank you, dr. blight. really. we have a couple questions here. and i think that we can go through these pretty quickly. >> i need the cover of my book back up here. >> one of the questions actually you just finished talking about this, but why did douglass write not one but three autobiographies? >> yeah, that's always a little bit of a puzzle. the first one he writes to tell the world who he is. oh, thank you. one button changes the world. and to make some money. in 1845, he's still a fugitive slave. he's been out on the circuit for almost four years as a lecturer.

he has really proven he can do this abolitionist itinerate speeching and preaching. did he ever. he took the anti-slavery circuit by storm. but what he had been doing on the anti-slavery circuit is essentially telling his own story most of the time. we don't have a lot of text of those early speeches, but what he's out there doing is telling all the stories in the narrative. he sat down in the winter of '44-'45 and put all those stories into a narrative form. into a book. he published his first -- he had a first published essay in a magazine in the fall of 1844. and there's a letter -- he has a letter to that editor that says, oh, if i could write for a book. a book. so that first one was revealing himself, telling the world who he is.

he didn't just go to england because he was afraid of being captured because he had exposed himself. he had already exposed himself over and over. he couldn't keep it in print. it sold 30,000 some copies in the first four or five years. that's a best seller in -- that's a best seller today. trust me. but my bondage and my freedom ten years later, whole different reason. and i'll be very brief. bondage and freedom is his coming out as a political abolitionist. he has transformed in the ten years between the first autobiography and the second into a political abolitionist. he's no longer in the gar sewnian camp to say the least. he's had a terrible breakup with william lloyd garrison and the other garrison, and bondage and freedom is, among other things, a political analysis of the slavery crisis in america.

and it's douglass' coming out as an advocate of certain kinds of uses of violence. and it's a much more lyrical douglass. he has really mastered prose now. he wants to show it off. and dearly needs the money. don't make any mistake. "bondage and freedom" if i recollect correctly, sold about 18,000 commie comcopies in the year or two. he took his sons on the road with him, and they would work the crowds while he would be up there speaking, a family affair. teenage boys trying to sell you a book of that guy speaking. pretty good idea. life and times later on, douglass never stopped telling his story. again, it's the weapon he had. by the time he writes the first -- then he wrote two editions of "life and times." in a sense, he wrote four

autobiographies. the first one, 1881. he's now beyond his federal service. he's beyond -- no, is he still recorded? yeah, he's still recorded. but he's got a lot more to tell. bondage and freedom entered in '55. he's got all these stories to tell about john brown, about lincoln, about the war, about reconstruction, about everything, up to the 1880s. and then he sits down again ten years later and sort of brings it up to date. in the third autobiography, it's the old man settling scores, telling you how famous he is. and it didn't sell very well. but it's still an amazing book. so each of them has its own context and reason why he wrote it. but "life and times" was a

commercial failure. even though there are a zillion copies around you can find today. >> another question we have is what did douglass think of the plan to return blacks to africa? >> by and large, he hated colonization. the plans, many different kinds above african-americans being transported back to africa or off to the caribbean somewhere or to central america. that doesn't mean that at time said he didn't respect some of the people who led such schemes, some, particularly black leaders of those schemes. and again, context is terribly important. but douglass hated the basic ideology of colonization to him was black people are not american. they cannot have a future here. and he saw it as essentially pro-slavery. he saw it essentially as a denial of the birth rite of

african-americans. now, again, in certain context, like in the wake of the dred scott case, just remember what the dred scott case said. it said black people have no rights that white people are to acknowledge and can never be citizens. never. when the supreme court speaks, it's supposed to mean never. and in three years in between dred scott, almost four years, in between dred scott and ft. sumpter, there were numerous schemes led by black leaders, martin delaney, a plan led by james redpath to take black folks to haiti or parts or haiti, and douglass had problems with his own family on this one, because two of his sons got very interested in leaving the country. had no hope. they actually applied for this federal scheme to relocate

people to that island off haiti. and he had a problem at home on this one. two 20-something sons saying dad, no, i ain't staying. until the emancipation proclamation came, and they were overnight ready to enlist in the union army. he even booked a passage, a lot of you know this, in april of 1861, to go have a look at haiti with his daughter, rosetta. and his passage to haiti was like a week after the firing of ft. sumpter, and there's a wonderful short piece in the newspaper about a trip to haiti canceled. but by and large, douglass hated the idealogical thrust and the values in most colonization

schemes because, and it caused him some ferocious debates with some people because at the heart of it, he believed was this idea that america could never truly be biracial. he did not accept that. >> in your book to be published soon, how much do you write about mr. douglass as a statesman and diplomat? >> a good deal. especially when it comes to haiti. i wrote an entire chapter on douglass' experience as u.s. minister to haiti. he was appointed by president harrison to be in effect u.s. ambassador to haiti. he served almost two years. not the best experience of his life. not the best one of the more misguided perhaps experiences of his life. he was really, oh, he was serving two masters. one was his principles in his soul, and the other was the united states government.

and he got caught in between. his problem, though, began with himself. you gotta admit this, he was a proponent of u.s. expansion into the caribbean. and i learned a lot about this from one of my own graduate students, two of them, actually, who have done dissertations on this, brilliant stuff, where in the wake of the civil war, it surprises you at first, a lot of former abolitionists, douglass was not alone in this at all, but a lot of them in the wake of the emancipation and the civil war, the transformation of america, they decided that the new america, abolitionist america, ought to take itself abroad now. ought to take anti-slavery to the rest of the world, most of which is still in some way enslaved. and especially the poor, desperate places like santa domingo and haiti. yes, and at the same time, the u.s. would create polling stations for its new navy.

so in a sense, he became a proponent of a kind of american imperialism, although he didn't call it that. it was this kind of abolitionist expansion. but he found that haiti was a very messy, complicated place. he did a lot of reading and research on it, but he didn't speak french. although he took ebenezer basset with him, fascinating african-american friend who had been the u.s. -- douglass was the third black american to be u.s. minister to haiti. that was not one of his firsts. he had a bunch of firsts. that's not one. but he took basset with him, who was affluent french speaker. he and helen, his wife, they got caught there in a coup d'etat at one point. practically had to flee for their lives. he was, i would say, a good diplomat, but not his best track

doing diplomacy. and it muffled his voice in many ways, although once he quit, he was free to speak about it. still a loyal republican, but he wasn't loyal to the people he had to fight with in the u.s. state department, mainly the secretary of state. what came out of it, of course, was the nation of haiti respected douglass so much, they made him their representative at the chicago world's fair, colombian expedition, and he became the representative of the nation of haiti to the world's colombian exposition, which i have a whole section of the book on that, too, which is an amazing story. douglass held out, appeared every day for six months at the haitian pavilion as like exhibit "a" and people would just come to gawk at him. he said that, people come in here every day just to look at

me. he felt a little bit like a zoo animal, but he gave one of the most amazing speeches of his life at the chicago exposition on behalf of haiti and about american lynching. had frederick douglass not existed, who else would have taken his place in this position, and is there historically a second place assigned to anyone? >> that's one of those quasi-counterfactual questions i actually have to answer. anyway. rivals, rivals, rivals. at one point, brown wanted the mantle. another point, martin delaney in a sense did. they worked together on his newspaper. his biggest rivals after the war, though, were by and large the next generation of black

american male leaders who were college educated. and they were. richard t. greener went to harvard. and there's a wholewere. richard greener went to harvard. and there's a whole slew of them. these guys were highly educated. they were all at least 20 years younger than douglass. they looked at him as the great man of the race. what happens to the great man of the race? the younger generation wants to knock him off. they want tenure. or something. he had bitter rivalries. actually, i will give you two candidates for that. and they were not really rivals. the first was james smith, who

was arguably douglass last mail friend. smith wrote the introduction to my bondage and freedom. the first ever buy ol if i written on douglass. it is terrific. still to this day. it's about 20 pages. jajs myth was the most highly educated african-american of the 19th century. three degrees from the university of glasgow. great essays about all kinds of subjects. he was douglass' alter ego. dougl douglass was everything that smith wasn't. and smith was everything that dougl

douglass wasn't. he could give speeches so much better than smith. smith only lived to 1865 and died of heart failure. they were extremely close. allies. they tended to agree on almost all these strategic issues and abolitionism. the second candidate i'll give you as a second most important african-american of the 19th century, though he left the country for 20 years, is alexander crummel. he was a minister, grew up in new york city. educated at the same african free school as james smith. went to the university of cambridge. degree in theology from cambridge. went to africa for a while as a missionary. spent 20 years of the epic of the civil war in africa or britain. came back after the war and became a kind of conservative theologian, but somebody douglass had enormous respect

for. even though they disagreed. they were on the same platform sometimes because they lived near each other in washington. he is not as well known as douglass, but she be as an intellectual. they shared a platform once at harpers ferry. they had a standoff. the subject -- it was the 20th anniversary of emancipation, i think, or the end of the war. 1883 or 1885. but crummel was giving this speech. he was incredibly eloquent. this was an audience of black students, one of the first black colleges. crummel 20 years after emancipation is telling the next generation of young blacks, stop dwelling on the past. put the past behind you. your life is in the future. put slavery out of urinarytive.

there's a press report that says douglass was sitting in the front row and most vociferously objected. and they had quite a go over this. the question of how much do you look back? what about memory? they still had an enormous respect for each other. kind of alter egos. highly educated cambridge graduate. douglass, graduate of talbot county. yeah. i would give those as two candidates, though john langston thought he was the new frederick douglass. they were not only rivals, they got in court against each other a number of times. bad, ugly stuff. >> final question. did douglass develop his own plans for reconstruction? no.

not -- there's not a unique fredfred frederick douglass lan for reconstruction, but he became a radical reconstruction. as the first civil rights act says of '66 and the 14th amendment confirms. he believes in black suffrage, universal black male suffrage. yes, he would have preferred women have the right to vote at the same time. he has an ugly falling out of susan anthony and elizabeth cady stanton over the right to vote for women over the 15th amendment. douglass wanted a reconstruction that was an occupation of the south. his reconstruction was essentially the scheme of

thaddeus stevens and charles sumner. find little things they might have disagreed on. he wanted the three constitutional amendments -- he wanted the 14th and 15th amendments to be more radical but took what they could get. both were compromises of a sort. but he wanted enforcement. he wanted these rights but he wanted them protected. he used to say famously, this is what republicans -- sorry if this offends anybody. there's a new book out called "self made man" sponsored by the cato institute. they love to seize on douglass -- he said what the negro needs most is for you to leave him alone. let the negro alone. then he would say, but give him fair play and protect him. give him his rights. let him have a farm.

property. and leave him alone. but protect him. it was the protection that fell apart in the terror of reconstruction violence. douglass -- i will say this, douglass was not a very effective or modern economic thinker. he did not believe in property redistribution. he did not much believe in land redistribution. he wasn't an aggressive radical economic thinker at all. he believed most solutions were political. he was not a 20th century man. you can't make him a marxist even if it's your life -- if you put your life into it. you can't make him a marxist. not even close. in fact, he's the opposite. when it came to reconstruction he wanted a remade, redesigned american south.

he wanted most black people to stay on the land which was controversial. he wanted mechanical education. and he wanted enforcement and protection. much of that, of course, would fall apart. the man of words could not do a lot about it. except keep preaching against it. but one things that gives his life such -- this is deeply related to reconstruction, such a remarkable trajectory, if he had just faded into the woodwork at the chicago's world fair and said some nice things sermand w home, put his feet up and saw to his orchards at cedar hill for the last year and a half, we wouldn't know this. but what did he do? he wrote the lessons of the hour. that bitter ferocious critique of lynching. a five or four-part analysis of

what he called the excuses for lynching. the arguments hold up today about as well as they did then. and he took it on the road. old man, 76. traveling all over the place. sooty, stinking trains to tell the country that its losing its soul. and it's loosie in losing the c. that douglass we have at the end going out, with that amazing speech, which he gave dozens of times, is one of the things that, again, makes that life such a trajectory that is almost irresistible. >> thank you, dr. white. [ applause ] >> we have a reception right outside.

i'm sure if you didn't get your answer questioned, he'll be outside. there's also a table selling some of his books. thank you very much for coming. c-span where history unfolds daily. in 1979, c-span was created as a public service by america's cable television companies. and today we continue to bring you unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the supreme court, public policy events in washington, d.c. and around the country. c-span is brought to you by your cable or satellite provider. now the first program in our nine-week series, 1968 america in turmoil.

we begin with the vietnam war. covering the major military, political and diplomatic developments in the war that year. our guests are veteran and former navy secretary, jim webb and author david maraniss. we begin with a video on the state of the war in 1967 produced by the photographic center. this is "american history tv." >> these marines have just returned from a tough battle in the north. they're now in a defensive perimeter. the weapons are cleaned and cared for. a matter of importance in the life of a professional fighting man. this is neither a clean or easy life for our men but they learn to accept the physical hardships of battle as their fathers did before them. ♪