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Tag: frederick douglass
John Greenleaf Whittier

For Democratic Society, Some Monumentally Hard Decisions Ahead

One of the recently vandalized monuments is a statue of poet John Greenleaf Whittier. Someone smeared "BLM" and "(expletive) Slave Owners" on the seated figure prominently displayed in the city named after him, Whittier, California.

It happens that Whittier was a fiery abolitionist from Massachusetts. In a famous 1833 pamphlet, he called slavery "the master-evil before which all others dwindle into insignificance."

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Frederick Douglass: Bookends Of A Great American Life

Frederick Douglass: Bookends Of A Great American Life

Abolitionist Frederick Douglass and I go way back — to the day I discovered his Life and Times in a San Francisco used bookstore round the corner from my house. I’ve read every page of his journey across the 19th century, from slavery to freedom to fame.

His autobiography takes you there, under the lash and on the train to Philadelphia, his escape from slavery. Crossing the Mason-Dixon line was treacherous, but he made it, wearing a sailor’s uniform.

Last Sunday, I visited Cedar Hill, Douglass’s spacious home in Washington, intact from the library volumes to the blue cistern for ice water. You can see the Capitol clear in the distance. Douglass lived here during the last chapter of his life, during which he was appointed ambassador to Haiti among other government posts.

It seemed fitting the freedom fighter lived well to a ripe age in this southerly point. Douglass was known as “the Lion of Anacostia” for his white mane. His wife’s Singer sewing machine sat upstairs. This house is where his story ends; he died in the front hall.

His story began 200 years ago. Douglass was born a slave on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, where slavery was as brutal as the Deep South’s cotton fields. I’ve seen where he grew up, in Talbot County by the Chesapeake Bay. The thousand-acre plantation was owned by the Lloyd family, with vast swaths worked by enslaved people.

When I traveled there, the carriage entrance, the land and the Great House were still owned by the Lloyd family — the 11th or 12th generation. The antebellum profusion of partridges, pheasants, ducks, and other game was not hard to imagine. I had the time-travel experience of sitting in the parlor with Mrs. Lloyd.

The elegant lady, 87, told me her grandfather welcomed “Frederick” to have drinks on the veranda when he came sailing down the river, a distinguished free man with a party of friends. Oh, how proud they were.

Wild.

Baltimore played a key part in Douglass’s life in bondage. As a child, he stayed with a wealthy family with a boy his age, Tommy. In a rare twist, Tommy’s mother taught both to read. That violated law and custom.

Strong under the sky, Douglass worked as a caulker on the city waterfront and turned his wages over to his master. Baltimore is where he established social contacts and resources to plan his escape — hard to do out in the country. Baltimore is where he boarded the train north to freedom in 1838. He found a safe haven in Massachusetts.

The abolitionist movement was just stirring. Douglass, striking in appearance and speech, became the first public speaker to tell the story of American slavery from personal experience. He humanized slavery, from the separation from his mother and grandmother to being dragged by horses to jail for attempting to escape. After his spellbinding oratory on Nantucket Island, Douglass became a sensation on the anti-slavery circuit.

While the Civil War raged, Douglass urged President Abraham Lincoln to let black soldiers join the Union Army. Lincoln took his advice. An extraordinary moment came after Lincoln delivered his second inaugural address. At the gathering, Lincoln said, “Here comes my friend Douglass. I am glad to see you. How did you like it?”

Lincoln added: “There is no man in the country whose opinion I value more than yours.”

According to his autobiography, Douglass replied, “Mr. Lincoln, that was a sacred effort.”

Keep in mind Lincoln said this before a white throng. Weeks later, the war was over and the president was dead. Douglass likened him to a mountain pine, with “grand simplicity and homely beauty.”

Douglass gave living portraits of the great people in his times, including Lucretia Mott, the radiant Quaker abolitionist and women’s rights champion.

A word about Douglass and women. He had two wives, one black and one white. Over the living room fireplace was a scene from Shakespeare’s tragedy, “Othello,” which he brought home from Italy — an interracial love story.

On Douglass’s last day in 1895, he came home from a women’s suffrage meeting with his old friend Susan B. Anthony. Now I have truly read his great book of life, from end to end.

To find out more about Jamie Stiehm and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit creators.com.

#EndorseThis: Seth Meyers Presents The Mind-Boggling Sean Spicer

#EndorseThis: Seth Meyers Presents The Mind-Boggling Sean Spicer

Glancing back over the second week of the Trump presidency, Seth Meyers noticed its duality — on the one hand, multiple constitutional crises, and on the other, mundane mistakes of mind-bogging stupidity.

Among those imbecile moments was Trump’s comment at a Black History Month event, praising the abolitionist leader and former slave Frederick Douglass as if he were a living civil rights leader. “He didn’t know Douglass was dead!”  exclaimed the Late Night host, noting that the great author, editor, and diplomat passed away back in 1895. “Yeah, keep your eye on that Fred Douglass kid!”

The coda to Trump’s ignorance came when Sean Spicer was asked by a reporter about the Douglass gaffe. If you missed his revealing response, Meyers replayed it in this segment — and wondered why this obvious incompetent hadn’t bothered to research Douglass before his next press briefing.

Speaking of Spicer, who will be a consistent source of offensive comedy gold until the day Trump finally dumps him, the White House press secretary provided many laughs when he insisted that the immigration and travel restrictions announced last week are “not a ban.” But as Meyers observes, with clips, that was precisely how Spicer — as well as Kellyanne Conway and Trump himself — had described the executive order.

And Meyers reviews the Betsy DeVos fiasco, as Trump’s designated education secretary first failed to answer questions in her confirmation hearing, and then got caught plagiarizing her replies to supplemental written questions.

Is every week going to be like this for the next four years?

 

The Way Of The World, Hamilton, Jackson and Tubman

The Way Of The World, Hamilton, Jackson and Tubman

One treasury secretary has saved another. Isn’t that the way of the world? History has its eyes on you, Jacob Lew.

Brilliant, storied Alexander Hamilton, darling of Broadway and Wall Street, will stay on the $10 bill. Hamilton, the first treasury secretary, had his face saved by Lew, our treasury secretary, who promised a genteel uprising to keep Hamilton right where he is. Even Broadway star Lin-Manuel Miranda, composer of the hip-hop musical “Hamilton,” pitched a plea to Lew.

Relax, Hamiltonians. America will keep singing his name. We’ll keep burying Aaron Burr, who slew him, in dust — even if Hamilton was no saint in sparking their duel.

Wait, there’s more news. All the fuss has produced a major move for President Andrew Jackson — off the $20 bill. Sing serendipity. From the annals of history, Lew chose Harriet Ross Tubman to be on the $20 bill, the first female face on paper bills in memory.

I knew that’s what Lew was going to do. He’s no historian, but choosing the 19th-century woman of color, code-named Moses, who led her people from slavery to freedom, nicely fits the tempo of our times. The nation watched as riots broke out in Baltimore last April.

Tubman was born into brutal slavery in the same state, on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Under the lash. Her head bore the scar of an iron hurled at her.

As a conductor on the abolitionist Underground Railroad, a secret network of safe houses for runaway slaves often run by Quakers, Tubman was sought by catchers as the “most wanted” fugitive slave. But she kept returning, in disguise, to lead family and kin, crossing over the Chesapeake Bay terrain. She navigated by the North Star, singing signals, becoming a legend for her fearlessness.

The number Tubman led over the Mason-Dixon line to freedom is unknown, but some scholars say it may have been just under 100. Like most born into slavery, she was illiterate. Also a Marylander, Frederick Douglass was born nearby on a rich plantation about the same time.

Tubman’s life was about crossing treacherous borders. During the Civil War, she worked as a Union spy in South Carolina, cradle of the Confederacy, where she urged slaves to board Union boats to freedom. Not for nothing, the abolitionist John Brown called her “General Tubman.” (She declined to join his raid on a federal arsenal.)

Tubman’s displacement of Jackson makes rich irony. A famed military man, Jackson owned 100 slaves at his Nashville plantation. I visited the “Hermitage” and heard all about “The General” and his favorite places to sit. “Where did the slaves live?” I asked. In the woods, said the lady in period costume. Not a word about the “Trail of Tears” was spoken — the forced march that Jackson sent thousands of American Indians on, leaving their own lands for Oklahoma. And Donald Trump praises Jackson like a long-lost great-great grandfather.

In the 1830s, Jackson personified the “Slave Power” in Washington. He harshly enforced all the slavery laws on the books. To crown his racist legacy, he made Roger Taney the Chief Justice of the United States. In1857, Taney authored the infamous Dred Scott Supreme Court decision, so ruthless on race that it hastened the Civil War. Taney was a Marylander, too.

Reporting for the Baltimore Sun, I crossed miles and the Bay Bridge to explore this sorry history. Tubman sites on the Eastern Shore are gaining recognition as significant. The great house of the Lloyd plantation, where young “Fred” grew up, still stood when I came to call. And relatives of Tubman still tell her story, fresh as farmer’s peaches.

“Who lives, who dies, who tells your story,” as the “Hamilton” song goes. We need to know more than second-grade stories about Tubman.

Lew named a line-up of seven women for re-designs of the $5, $10 and $20 (on the back of bills.) Most were Quaker or African-American. They were all truly great. If I were in the room where it happens: Jake, I’d say, don’t be fooled by the bonnet. Lucretia Mott started it all as the women’s rights movement and an abolitionist leader. Her fellow Quaker, Alice Paul, crossed to victory in 1920 — for suffrage.

Freedom fighter Tubman lived to a very old age, about 90 in 1913, but she never saw that day. Too bad she can’t live to see this one.

To find out more about Jamie Stiehm and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit Creators.com.