He had a name but no knowledge of his birthday or age. Rather than being cared for by a loving mother and father, he was raised as a slave to white property owners. On only two to four hours of rest, he was called to rise before dawn for a grueling day of work whether under a hot, white sun or over snow-covered fields. His clothing consisted of two shirts, one pair of flimsy trousers and a pair of shoes. Many of his young slave brothers and sisters were forced to work without any clothing whatsoever on a farm in the slave state of Maryland..
As food, which was of a quality fit only for barn animals, was distributed in small, inadequate quantities, he and his cohorts suffered from hunger and malnutrition. Unlike his fellow bondsmen, however, this man - Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) - would teach himself to read and escape his lowly station in life to go on to become one of the greatest Americans who have ever lived.
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Beyond enduring the deprivations of family, food and clothing, Douglass witnessed the barbarity of slavery and recalled several horrific scenes in his autobiographical masterpiece Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845). After one overseer, a Mr. Hopkins, was deemed overly lenient in plantation management, he was replaced by a young, humorless man known to Douglass as Mr. Gore. From Douglass' account, his surname was regrettably apropos, 'Mr. Gore was a grave man...(he) once undertook to whip one of Colonel Lloyd's slaves, by the name of Demby. He had given Demby but a few stripes (lashes), when, to get rid of the scourging, he ran and plunged himself into a creek, and stood there at the depth of his shoulders, refusing to come out. Mr. Gore told him that he would give him three calls, and that, if he did not come out at the third call, he would shoot him...Demby made no response...Mr. Gore then, without consultation or deliberation with anyone (i.e. the plantation owner - Colonel Lloyd),...raised his musket to his face, taking deadly aim at his standing victim, and in an instant poor Demby was no more. His mangled body sank out of sight, and blood and brains marked the water where he stood.'
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Holding On To Hope
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That was merely one episode of violence in the childhood of Frederick Douglass. He also had the misfortune of watching his aunt being tied up and whipped mercilessly by another sadistic overseer. After years of cruelty, Douglass had nearly come to his own spiritual end saying, 'I often found myself regretting my own existence and wishing myself dead, and but for the hope of being free, I have no doubt that I should have killed myself, or done something for which I should have been killed. While in this state of mind, I was eager to hear any one speak of slavery. I was a ready listener.' His intellectual maturity, having a true desire to listen rather than simply comment and pontificate reflexively, saved his life. Despite the wishes of his master, Douglass was determined to become literate. Years and years of patient copying of texts and thumbing through Noah Webster's dictionary led to his ability not only to read but to write persuasively. In time, he would teach other slaves to read the New Testament on Sundays.
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After much deliberation and planning, Douglass managed to escape his lot by donning a naval uniform on a risky journey from Maryland to New York City. After riding two trains, a ferry and a steamboat, Douglass became a Northerner and a free man on 3 September 1838. From that day onward, he spent the remainder of his life campaigning for the abolition of slavery and equal rights for women. In the 1840s, Douglass set out on a lecture tour in the North to educate citizens on the dehumanizing nature of slavery. After a successful tour on the American public-speaking circuit, Douglass won similar acclaim in Europe. He then appeared at the groundbreaking Seneca Falls Convention in New York state in 1848 to support its platform of political and social equality for women. In short, Douglass was entering the prime of his life as both an activist and a human being. Less than two decades earlier, Douglass had been an uneducated and illiterate slave. Because of his determination to read, however, he found himself as one of the most recognized and beloved figures in America and Europe by 1850. From the rags of slavery to the riches of freedom, Douglass' story may have had no equal in greatness in American history up to that time. Yet, he still had another forty-five productive years to live and cement his reputation
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The Day After July 4th: His Signature Moment
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Of all of his accomplishments between 1848-1895, none surpassed his oratorical performance on the day after July 4th in 1852. Asked to speak at Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York, he regaled his audience with a speech entitled 'The Meaning of July 4th for the Negro'.
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At the height of the address, Douglass exclaimed, 'What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than any other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is a constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shout of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all of your religious parade and solemnity, are to him, mere bombast, fraud and deception, impiety, and hypocrisy - a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.'
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Rather than moderate his delivery to suit all ears, Douglass possessed the courage to speak the truth on July 5th, 1852 - as great a day as any July 4th in American history.
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The Struggle For Dignity: Past and Present
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What can Americans of the 21st century learn from the life of Frederick Douglass and his July 5th speech?
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First and foremost, Americans must never cease contrasting the Jeffersonian ideals of 'All men are created equal' and the right of every citizen to 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness' with the realities of their time.
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In the supposed 'greatest' country in the world - and certainly the wealthiest - tens of millions of Americans go to sleep hungry, illiterate, jobless and/or without access to health care every night. When the sun rises the next day, these forgotten millions wake up to another day of economic slavery with little recourse to a better life.
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It is not just the poor, however, who live under a tyrannical economic system. Tens of millions of 'middle class' citizens are either locked into dead-end jobs or forced to cobble together two, three and sometimes four part-time jobs at abysmal wages just to pay the rent and put food on the table.
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America cannot simply go on with its present boom-bust economic system. Too many citizens walk the streets with ruined lives, lost dreams and broken hearts. Too many families have dissolved from the tedium and misery of low wages. Too many areas of the country have fallen into a collective despair from declining industries. Economic tyranny is one of the cruelest forms of slavery to ever burden mankind.
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As Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, 'True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made of.'
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In order to attain 'true individual freedom', the government, the corporations, the small businesses and the people (labor) of the United States desperately need to engage in an open and honest national dialogue on the rights of every citizen to have access to a full education, meaningful full-time work and comprehensive health care coverage. It is long overdue. After the Vietnam War derailed President Johnson's plans to elevate all Americans into the middle class in his 'Great Society' program, no attempt has been made since to address the significant problems in the American economy or its victims.
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The time is now. Neither the Obama administration nor Congress can end the hypocrisy between our Jeffersonian ideals and our current economic system. Dignity for every man, woman and child in a new economy based more on people than profit will only come from Americans truly wanting 'Change'.
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The struggle of Frederick Douglass has not ended, and it will not end until liberty graces each and every corner of society.
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(Picture: A young and free Frederick Douglass)
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J Roquen