Frederick Douglass’ name misspelled in 1877 Congressional Directory [45th U.S. Congress, First Session]

Author’s collection.

Short essay on Frederick Douglass’ presence in Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man”

“As stated previously, Ellison also represents Frederick Douglass in Invisible Man. For instance, Brother Tarp hangs a poster of Frederick Douglass on the wall in the office of Invisible Man. He asks Invisible Man if he has ever heard of Frederick Douglass. Invisible Man states that his grandfather used to speak of Douglass. This could be an allusion to the fact that the implications of Douglass’s leadership are far-reaching and long lasting. Further, Ellison possibly alludes to both W.E.B. Dubois and Frederick Douglass and their stances on women’s rights to vote. This occurs when the narrator’s focus in the Brotherhood changes from the downtown Harlem district to the women’s issue while the Brotherhood investigates him for wrongdoing (Ellison 406). According to background information about Douglass and Dubois, Dubois was “the leading black male spokesperson for women’s rights since Frederick Douglass (Hill 771)³.”

Full essay HERE.

Helen Pitts Douglass was no simpleton; she could handle a lunatic who knocked on her door with ease [Wash Post, Jan. 27, 1889]

Historic memory has been rather unfair to the wives of Frederick Douglass. Simply told, Douglass’ first wife couldn’t read and his second wife was “second-rate.” These attitudes still exist to this day, just ask the Park Rangers at the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site (FDNHS) who field questions from the general public seven days a week. The forthcoming work of Dr. Leigh Fought should help to eviscerate these fallacies which have held the minds of both the general public and insular academics for decades.

One of the more interesting items I discovered going through thousands of newspaper stories was this one from January 1889 which ran in the Washington Post. The text speaks for itself and I have been told by staff at the FDNHS that this story has helped calm the nerves of some visitors who rush to uninformed judgments about Douglass’ second wife, Helen Pitts.

“At 9 o’clock yesterday morning John Anderson, a colored man living on the Flats in Hillsdale, and who has been acting in a peculiar manner for several days, became violently insane and rushing from his house ran down Nichols avenue, yelling, gesticulating and scattering pedestrians right and left. Turning up Jefferson street, he ran to the house of Fred Douglas and rang the bell. Pushing his way past the frightened servant girl, he confronted Mrs. Douglass and at once proposed to offer prayer. Mrs. Douglass, who was alone, took in the situation, and tried to quiet John, but suddenly he rushed into the dining-room and entered a closet. Mrs. Douglass quickly shut the door and locked it keeping the lunatic a prisoner until Officer W. T. Anderson came and took him in custody. John is a carpenter by trade, and has been subject to temporary attacks of insanity for some time, but was always considered harmless. He was sent to the police surgeon’s for examination and will probably be committed to the asylum.”

Washington Grit’s acerbic editorial on Frederick Douglass’ second marriage [Feb. 16, 1884]

In nearly all I have read on Frederick Douglass and his second marriage, biographers use the same repeated source — The Pittsburgh Weekly News and a paper from Franklin County, Virginia — as a near monolith to represent the public and the press’ reaction. I find this lazy, amateurish, and unfitting of true scholarship. There are only a handful of true biographies (for adult readers) on Douglass, and yet, even with he best of these works, these two sources are repeated and regurgitated.

Why not look at newspapers in Washington, DC? In 1884 there were a couple of papers in the city…including The Washington Grit edited by black nationalist John Edward Bruce, who had contributed to The New National Era.

On February 16, 1884 an editorial ran reading, “We are opposed to colored men marrying second-rate white women, yet we do not see anything in the above threat to deter them from so doing if they wish. There has been as much fuss and noise about Frederick Douglass’ marriage to Helen M. Pits as if she were the daughter of the Secretary of State or some other dignitary. In our judgement neither of the contracting parties have gained anything. [Phineas Taylor] Barnum could make a mint of money out of this couple if they would consent to go on exhibition. We do not believe that it adds anything to the character of good sense of either of the two races to intermary with each other, and when it is done it will generally be found that moral depravity is at the bottom of them.”

To note, Helen Pitts, a college educated women in 19th century America, was white, but she was not “second-rate.”

Bruce, a fascinating figure recently given some long overdue scholarly attention, later reconciled with Douglass.

Mark H. Metcalf offers advance praise for Frederick Douglass’ Washington

Courtesy National Park Service, FDNHS

John Muller has done America a favor nonpareil. With his new book, Frederick Douglass’ Washington: The Lion of Anacostia, Mr. Muller brings Douglass to life as few have done or even attempted. The Lion of Anacostia, as it turns out, loved to play violin for his guests, mentored countless numbers of youth, and could eulogize American soldiers and never leave a dry eye in his audience. No more effective advocate for black advancement existed during his lifetime, yet he frequently counseled personal responsibility and merit as the best means to overcome bigotry.

Mr. Muller’s volume offers a strong narrative to explain the civil rights movement of the 19th Century, a movement that inevitably led to the successes of Martin Luther King in the 20th Century. Douglass, in Muller’s deft hands, was no two-dimensional figure, but a complex man who understood slavery in his bones and was determined to take America past it. Douglass never invited the extremes of pity or violence, but instead stood with other titans of abolitionism as a legalist who refused the entreaties of John Brown to arouse insurrection. If ever there was a post-racial civil rights advocate, Frederick Douglass is the one man who understood that character, discipline, and education, not the cheap appeals we know today as race-cards, would overcome the dry rot of racism. John Muller, through Frederick Douglass, has erected a mirror for America to look into and the reflection it casts is one all of us can be proud of.

Mark H. Metcalf, Garrard County (Kentucky) Attorney and a Major in the Kentucky National Guard, is a patriot and truly “…a man for all seasons…”

“Nearer, my God, to the Thee” sung at Frederick Douglass’ funeral at Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church [Feb. 24, 1895]

“Though like a wanderer, daylight all gone / Darkness be over me, my rest a stone / Yet in my dreams I’d be nearer, my God to thee / Nearer, my God, to Thee, nearer to thee!” – Choir at Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church, 1518 M Street NW, funeral of Frederick Douglass, February 24, 1895.

* This song was reportedly one of Douglass’ favorites. It is still sung as part of Sunday services at Metropolitan AME. *

“Fred Douglass Helps A Church” in Baltimore [New York Times, March 1892]

FRED DOUGLASS HELPS A CHURCH.

Baltimore, March 5. – Some weeks ago Frederick Douglass visited Baltimore in company with his son for the purpose of paying off the mortgage on the Centennial Colored Methodist Episcopal Church. The church is the one in which Mr. Douglass first received his religious education, and, finding that it was in financial straits, he came to the rescue and lifted the mortgage.

In the presence of 1,300 persons the Rev. J.L. Thomas, the pastor, burned the mortgage papers. Sunday has been set aside as a day of special service. Fred Douglass will deliver an address.

Frederick Douglass & his sons lived in greater Anacostia area in early 1870s; before Frederick Douglass purchased Cedar Hill in the fall of 1877

When Frederick Douglass moved to Uniontown, horse thieves, wild animals, and escapees from the Government Hospital for the Insane roamed the pastoral roadways. In just over twenty years since its founding the suburban subdivision of Uniontown, and the adjoining villages, had seen the erection of school houses, churches, stables, new homes and businesses, and meeting halls. Douglass was no stranger to this community.

The next neighborhoods over from Uniontown were known as Potomac City, Hillsdale, and Barry Farm (developed by the Freedmen’s Bureau); the last two names remain in currency today.  With more than $50,000 set aside by General Oliver Otis Howard, head of the Freedmen’s Bureau, in a trust to develop “normal collegiate institutions or universities” these funds were used to purchase 375 acres from the descendents of James D. Barry in 1867. Sitting just beneath the Government Hospital for the Insane, which saw its first patient in 1855, the sale of lots would help relieve “the immediate necessities of a class of poor colored people in the District of Columbia.” Within two years, more than 260 families had made Barry Farm their home, the Douglass boys included.

Writing in his autobiography General Howard recalled, “Some of those who bought one acre or two-acre lots were fairly well off. I found it better to have a few among the purchasers who were reasonably educated, and of well-known good character and repute, to lead in the school and church work, and so I encouraged such to settle alongside the more destitute.” Howard would often bring government officials to Barry Farm to show them the self-sufficient community, largely made up of freedmen. “Everyone who visited the Barry Farm and saw the new hopefulness with which most of the dwellers there were inspired, could not fail to regard the entire enterprise as judicious and beneficent.”

Testifying before a Congressional Committee in 1870, Edgar Ketchum offered a sketch of a Barry Farm homestead. “You may see another (man) some thirty-six years of age, very black, very strong, very happy, working on his place. His little house cost him $90. You see his mother; that aged ‘aunty,’ as she raises herself up to look at you, will tell you that she has had eleven children, and that all of them were sold away from her.” Ketchum continued, “She lived down in Louisiana. The man will tell you that he is one of those children. He went down to Texas, and when he came up through Louisiana and Alabama he found his old mother and brought her up with him, along with his wife and son. And there they live.”

And there, all three of Douglass’s sons initially settled upon moving to Washington in the late 1860s, a testament to the family’s creed and commitment to being on the front lines of uplifting their race. Charles and Lewis would move across town while Frederick, Jr. would spend the rest of his life on nearby Nichols Avenue, today Martin Luther King, Jr. Avenue. In the early years of the 1870s, when in Washington to run The New National Era and serve on the Legislative Council, records indicate Frederick was living in the Anacostia area with one or all of his sons.

Frederick Douglass remembers gathering “scattered pages of the Bible from the filthy street-gutters” in Baltimore, MD [Life and Times of Frederick Douglass]

Bible pages

Frederick Douglass’ intellect and drive didn’t just come up from slavery;  it came up from the streets.

“My desire to learn increased, and especially did I want a thorough acquaintance with the contents of the Bible. I have gathered scattered pages of the Bible from the filthy street-gutters, and washed and dried them, that in moments of leisure I might get a word or two of wisdom from them.” – Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, 1892.

Evening Star calls Frederick Douglass Anacostia’s “one historic character among her citizens” [December 5, 1891]

“Anacostia can at least boast of one historic character among her citizens – a man whose name and fame are probably world-wide. Frederick Douglass, the foremost man of his race in the country, lives in the old Van Hook house, built by one of the founders of the town, on Cedar Heights, between Pierce and Jefferson streets. The house, which is quite attractive, stands on a beautiful knoll, from which one of the finest views of the city of Washington found within the District is presented.”