Frederick Douglass

[Symphony]

I'm reading a A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, written by Himself.

My edition is c. 1963; with a frontispiece dated 1845.

--Interesting autobiography, of the former slave turned politcal and influential activist; escaped to the North, in about 1841...

[Symphony]

What a book.   Not even 150 pages.  I just finished it.

Composed and written shortly after his escape from Maryland, where he'd worked on a plantation, to Boston - a four hundred mile trek he mentions only delicately, to protect those who assisted in his passage - and himself from those who would apprehend him.  Slavetraders had agents in the North.

Agents would deliberately befriend and encourage slaves to escape, then turn them in to collect the reward.

He tells of learning in the Baltimore shipyards the trade of calking(caulking) in the late 1830s, working frantically for the yard's contract to build two men-of-war (ships), for the Mexican Navy, and advancing in skill over the period of one year, until he was able to command, as he puts it, the highest wages for that trade, $1.50/day, or $9.00/week(for a six day workweek); that come Saturday evening, his master would receive him, receiving all the nine dollars, and always asking, to make sure, "Is that all"? And then him giving back maybe five or six cents.  And his fellow shipbuilders, some 50 white workmen or so, surrounding him, and beating him to a pulp, out of apparent jealousy of his acquired skill, and a subsequent lawyer ("esquire", in the book), responding to his master's query that there was nothing they could do about it, since none of the (white) witnesses would testify against their fellows, and black testimony would not be accepted in a court of law.

The appendix, 5 or 6 pages, at the end, particularly incisive,  on American 'Christianity', not being the 'Christianity of Jesus', as Douglass states it:  Slaveholders actively beating and lashing slaves, including women slaves, until the blood flowed, those same masters then holding church revivals on the weekends - preachers, ministers.

.

[cris]

Thanks for the synopsis Symphony. That was a tear jerker!  It makes me absolutely sick to read that people can be so cruel, and then, profess Christianity.  It ISN'T the Christianity of Jesus.  Douglass was correct.

Maybe, one of these days, I'll read it myself.

cris

 

[Yoyostick]

Thanks for the synopsis Symphony. That was a tear jerker!  It makes me absolutely sick to read that people can be so cruel, and then, profess Christianity.  It ISN'T the Christianity of Jesus.  Douglass was correct.

Maybe, one of these days, I'll read it myself.

cris

 

My thoughts exactly. I can't tell you how much time I've spent trying to convince people that the South was completely wrong in the Civil War. I've even had people try to convince me than slavery was Biblically all right! Please.

[Symphony]

Thanks, cris/ yoyo.

It's a pretty quick read, cris - hard to put down.  There's an online version, at Berkeley; not sure of the website; but i notice a very interesting edit: It doesn't seem to include the short Appendix, where Douglass is careful to distinguish his ealier criticism of American Christianity from that of Jesus.  I'm wondering if this was deliberate, since Civil Rights advocates at, like, Berkeley, etc., would be reluctant to champion historical figures like Douglass who include such a wonderful thanksgiving to Jesus.  Even just the short Appendix is a very interesting read.