Ken Morris, Douglass and Washington Descendant Talks about Modern Day Slavery

As an artist in two dimension, members of Working Artists Forum have much camaraderie and gain much support from their fellow members as explained by Betty Huang, president, and Carol McClees, member and chair of the Local Color exhibitions on Carlisle's Chesapeake.   Artists' works are juried and shown both on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and the Western Shore. 

Brenda Wooden, President of the Frederick Douglass Honor Society (FDHS), tells us how the Society began with efforts to erect a statue in the great orator's and emancipator's name on the courthouse lawn of Easton, the county seat of Talbot County where Frederick Douglass was born and spent the first years of his life.  FDHS celebrates their native son with a special day the last Saturday in September.  Past speakers at the yearly festivities include: authors, Celeste Marie Bernier, John Stauffer, David Blight and the great, great, great grandson of Frederick Douglass, Kenneth Morris.

Frederick Douglass began his Statesman years by moving from Rochester, New York to "A" Street on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. after the Civil War in 1872.  Kenneth Morris, his great, great, great grandson talks about  the Douglass home on Cedar Hill in Anacostia where America's famous abolitionist lived with his family until his death.  The home is now under the National Park Service umbrella open to visit.  Douglass' son, Charles built a home for his father in Highland Beach near Annapolis, Maryland.  While his father never could enjoy the view looking across the Chesapeake Bay to Talbot County where he was born, the home can be visited by appointment.

Ken Morris descends from two great lines of African Americans: Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington.  Through an organization begun by his mother, Nettie Washington Douglass, he endeavors to continue his families' legacies for bringing justice and education to all.  That organization is the Frederick Douglass Family Initiatives.  

Leigh Fought, Ph.D., professor at LeMoyne College in Syracuse, NY, recounts Frederick Douglass's 25 years in Rochester, New York, an area that was known as the "Burned over" District in the 1840's period of America.  A hotbed of religious and social movements, Quakers, Abolitionists, Methodists and Suffragettes gained momentum in this area of Upper State and Central New York which was still considered the Western Frontier.

Frederick Douglass moved his family from Lynn, Massachusetts to Rochester during this time.  Dr. Fought describes the encounters he has with segregated schools for his daughter, Rosetta.   She also shows the parallels in the lives of Frederick and his wife Rosetta, a woman who was free when he married her but he was still "owned" by his master, and Nathan Sprague, a runaway slave from Maryland who married Douglass's daughter, Rosetta, a woman who was born free.

Douglass during his Rochester period breaks away from William Lloyd Garrison, the leader and his employer of the American Anti-Slavery Society.  He continues to travel extensively on the public speaking circuit to agitate about slavery all the while beginning to publish "The North Star" with the help of his family and several European women.  The Republican Party is coming into being during this Antebellum Period.  During this formative period in Douglass's life, it is a path of moral suasion not adhering to the radical physicality of John Brown that Frederick chooses to change the course of American history.

Celeste-Marie Bernier, author of "If I Survive" and co-author of "Picturing Frederick Douglass: An Illustrated Biography of the Nineteenth Century's Most Photographed American" with John Stauffer and Zoe Trodd, begins with Frederick Douglass's first trip to the British Isles in 1845.  In Scotland he rails against the religious hypocrisy in a "Send Back the Money Campaign" written on Salisbury crag overlooking Edinburgh.

Next Douglass journeys to England where anti-slavery advocates purchase his freedom from the Aulds.  After his manumission, Frederick returns to the United States and moves his family to Rochester, New York from Massachusetts.  Bernier, a world Frederick Douglass scholar, documents the Douglass family collective freedom fighter efforts.  She illustrates how Anna Murray Douglass shepherded slaves through the Underground Railroad to their freedom in Canada burning while raising their children as Frederick continued his anti-slavery speaking engagements to far flung lyceums in the pre-Civil War era.

Two years after the Civil War outbreak, Douglass writes "Men of Color, To Arms."  Bernier explains how each of the three Douglass sons  answered their father's clarion call.  She ends with a tribute to daughter, Rosetta Douglass Sprague, who counseled, "Read, reflect and act."

The Hill in Easton, Maryland lends clues to the rich religious heritage and culture of free persons of color, hirelings (who lent themselves out) and enslaved persons during the time of the American Revolution and into the 19th Century.  Frederick Douglass, born a slave,  and his future wife, Anna Murray, born free,  were born on opposite  shores of the Tuckahoe River.  They met in Baltimore.  

Forty years later, Frederick comes back to Easton to dedicate two churches, the Asbury Methodist and the Bethel AME Church, both still standing today on The Hill where anthropological finds include a bundle, also known as a wheel in reference to the Prophet Ezekiel.  Professor Dale Green of Morgan State university, a descendant of Harriet Tubman, the great freedom fighter, and Frederick Douglass, the great 19th Century emancipation fighter, shares his family history and the historiography of one of the oldest American free black communities on Carlisle's Chesapeake.

Steve Luxenburg tells accounts of Frederick Douglass in his book, "Separate: The Story of Plessy versus Ferguson."  He begins with the dawn of railroads in the United States (1830s) and explains how conductors would try to bypass railroad stops so as not to encounter black abolitionists to be seated with whites in railroad cars, Frederick Douglass among them.  In another instance, Douglass  was on a steamship on the Ohio River  traveling with fellow  abolitionist speaker, Charles Redmond.  Kentuckians asked them to leave their dining car after they had been invited to give a talk by Henry Clay, the Statesman.

Ann Coughlin describes Frederick Douglass' visit to Cork, Ireland, her hometown.  He stayed with the Jennings family whose daughter, Isabel was the secretary of the Cork Anti-Slavery Society.  The Quakers and Methodists were among the first to fight for the abolition of slavery. Father Leopold Mathew at that time led a temperance movement in Ireland which influenced Douglass greatly.

Ann Coughlin recounts how when Frederick Douglass meets Daniel O'Connell, O'Connell calls Douglass the Black O'Connell.  Both great orators, O'Connell had consistently fought for the rights of American slaves even while fighting for the constitutional liberties of has fellow Irishmen.  The emancipation story of the Irish Catholics from England can be likened to the emancipation of the American slaves in earning the right to vote.  Frederick Douglass was only 27 when he came to Ireland, still a slave, owned by a Marylander.  Why was the world astounded that a man who was a slave could speak so well?

Ann Coughlin explains the trajectory of Frederick Douglass from a slave boy purchasing his first book in Baltimore, Maryland, the "Columbian Orator" to his arrival in Ireland.   During the 19th Century, the gift of oratory was prized and thousands would flock to hear a good speech today likened to a good "Ted Talk."   

When Douglass arrives in Dublin he must republish his best selling "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave."  Douglass writes his own forward in the Irish Narrative, taking steps to create his own identity, a formative step toward his independence.