Frederick Douglass

Spencer Lambert

ENGL 48A

Journal for Frederick Douglass

October 12, 2009

"I have seen him tie up a lame young woman, and whip her with a heavy cowskin upon her naked shoulders, causing the warm red blood to drip; and, in justification of the bloody deed, he would quote this passage of Scripture--'He that knoweth his master's will, and doeth it not, shall be beaten with many stripes.'"

Internet Quotation: “Douglass is one of the towering figures of the 19th century. His move from slave to politician, editor and writer is extraordinary. What makes it even more impressive is that he never forgot the importance of struggle." - Richard Bradbury

Summary: The first quotation is one of the many scenes displaying the cruelty towards the slaves by their masters. In this particular example, Douglass tells of how he once saw a young woman tied up and whipped by her master who was reciting Bible verses. If that isn't hypocrisy, I don't know what is.

The second quotation comes from the Socialist Worker website. It is from Richard Bradbury, who wrote a book about Douglass's 1845 tour of Ireland, Scotland, and England. While the book relates to a specific part of Douglass's life, the quotation can be applied to the man's entire life as an orator and writer.

My Ideas: This short narrative has a brutality and gruesomeness to it that, even in our world of torture porn films and happy slapping, was deeply unsettling. Each scene revolving around the beating or killing of a slave has a stark, clear quality to it, as if the reader were in the room, forced to watch from the side and inspect afterwards. The scenes themselves are also quite repetitive, with certain images -- the whip, the cowskin, the black back besmirched with blood -- acting as constant reminders of oppression. Repeated images like this have become ingrained in my mind, so that even during Douglass's triumphs, there was the "warm red blood" and the tortured slave in my thoughts, as if to constantly remind me that just because one got away, there were many more to go, some of which are hurting at this very moment. I couldn't ever escape the images of these punishments, even when I knew Douglass was free in the North. Around every corner was another lashing, an angry master, a sick smile widening with each blow.

It is the simple, clean prose that does this for me. We don't really ever get anything beyond hard facts and apparent details, but this makes it all the more unsettling. I could get Douglass's own detailed idea of what a slave's back looks like covered in blood, or how brain matter sits in a river, but I have a picture all the more personally intense, and Douglass seems to write with that in mind.

Other recurring images had a lasting effect. Douglass habitually compares the state of the slaves to that of brutes and beasts and portrays the slave-masters as hypocritical so-called Christians. This narrative is effective because of its ability to so easily penetrate with its oft-repeated ideas. We see a pattern of abuse and forced resignation towards the slaves, which is only broken when one, like Douglass, fights back, learns a little bit, and escapes. Instead of booze, Douglass looked to books for his escape, understanding that literacy was the best path to liberation.

I think it is interesting how many parallels there are to today's society. I obviously don't mean for this kind of slavery, but for those dejected souls in wage slavery, those who rely upon nighttime drinks and games to get through the day of work that barely allows them to meet their most basic needs. They toil away the day only to receive a pitiful sum and a meager existence. It sounds like slavery, only you go home at the end of the day instead of staying on the plantation and you aren't physically beaten. Beyond the message of antislavery, there is a deeper call to look at the world head-on, and not recoil into a dark, debauched fantasy land, hidden from the grim realities of the world. Televisions may have replaced foot races, but the message remains the same. This narrative remains a powerful call to action for any cause worth fighting for, not just slavery. If we would get up, educate ourselves, and start acting, Douglass seems to say, we could make something great happen. In 1845, this would have been a revolutionary text. In 2009, it remains one.

Along with the call to arms, as it were, for the people, I also think his critique of American Christianity, with all of his white-hot, scathing remarks, still rings true today. Nearly every slave-master in the narrative uses Christianity as his justification. In the quotation above we see a downright evil slave-master quote Scripture in an attempt to prove that his actions are in keeping with Christian tradition. This tradition continues today, it would seem. While Christians no longer use physical violence (usually), they quote the Bible in an attempt to keep basic civil liberties from groups of people whose lifestyles they deem wrong. They denounce these people, spitting hateful vitriol, and then go to church on Sundays claiming they are pious and just. Hypocritical Christians didn't, unfortunately, die with slavery.

I wouldn't have expected to take so much advice on how to live from an antislavery book written in 1845. I fully anticipated a very narrowly defined, easily applicable story to help the abolitionist cause. What I got instead was an inspiring look at what it is to take back one's humanity from the clutches of an unjust society. While our society's transgressions against people are not quite so horrific as those of Douglass's time, we still have many wrongs to right. "If there is no struggle, there is no progress," Douglass once said. The struggle remains and there is still progress to be won.