Author Sidney Morrison joins us to discuss his book, Frederick Douglass: a Novel, about the man considered the most prominent African American of the 19th century. Frederick Douglass was instrumental in ending the institution of slavery from which he escaped to become a fierce abolitionist, gifted orator, and publisher of The North Star newspaper. Douglass collaborated with William Lloyd Garrison, John Brown, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and the Underground Railroad, as well as Presidents Abraham Lincoln to Grover Cleveland and became the first African American to hold esteemed political positions such as U.S. Marshal of the District of Columbia and Minister to Haiti.
This portrayal of Douglass takes readers beyond the public persona by detailing the women in his life: Anna Murray Douglass, his wife and the mother to his five children, who was instrumental to his escape; English abolitionist, Julia Griffith, who worked with Douglass until whispers about an extramarital affair and inspired her return to England; German journalist, Ottilie Assing, who died by suicide after years of waiting for Douglass to marry her. Instead, he marries a white abolitionist 20 years his junior, Helen Pitts, following Anna’s death. Morrison depicts Douglass as a complex, sometimes conflicted man.
Frederick Douglass dedicated his life to racial equality and this novel is an homage to him as a significant figure in U.S. and African American History.
- KBOO