James Earl Jones reads Frederick Douglass' speech, "What to the American Slave is the Fourth of July," as part of the Voices from a People's History series.
Douglass actually gave the speech on the fifth of July at the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society. His friend, Julia Griffiths,* told him that the speech was "wonderful!"**
The basic critic, and most of the language, rings true today.
Who could restate this passage with full honesty at this very moment?: "I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you this day rejoice are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you, not by me. "
Of what sins might we refer today with this?: "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 shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mock; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy - a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages."
Or this?: "There is not a nation of the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour."
This nation has a black man in the White House (for all that he is proving to be less than we need from a just president -- if a president can even be just). Douglass himself might have been amazed by that along. Still, just as he said when slavery ended, this is merely a beginning. America had not been absolved of injustices, past, present, or future.
*You will want to know about her! Later post for certain.
**I may be off on the word. She might have said "great."
Saturday, July 04, 2009
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6 comments:
Clio, this post has had me mulling all day. And, I haven't got much coherent to reply, except thanks for posting it and saying "Hey, look at this."
Julia Griffiths' name is ringing bells that I can't put my finger on. I promise not to cheat and google her...
This is why I study the man!
Go ahead and Google! Wikipedia has a short entry on her: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Griffiths, but not a whole lot else appears out on the intertubes about her. The best account of her appears in the Maria Diedrich book, "Love Across the Color Lines." There is also an article about her out there, but I'd have to dig around for the citation.
Humph. That Wiki article is *extremely* short. Was Garrison just undermining Douglass and Griffith with his accusations (pay no attention to the black man or the woman, they have no moral authority because they're messing around...), or was the writer of the Wiki article just slinging mud?
I'm convinced that area of New York State is the center of the universe.
The Wiki article was not as sleazy as it could have been. Garrison himself was a pretty stand-up guy. Even as the AASS was saying and doing a lot of shocking things in regard to Douglass, Garrison tended to stay back. This is where part of my project kicks in. The secretary for the AASS, Maria Weston Chapman, was a powerful administrator. She kept tabs on Douglass and tended to paint him in the worst light. At this point in his career, he had broken away from the AASS and set up his own newspaper with the help of British donations and Isaac and Amy Post up in Rochester. Julia Griffiths brought with her some good business sense and British connections. Since many of the abolitionists in Britain had been very attracted to Douglass himself, they were more likely to donate to his work than to the AASS. In other words, he was competition for fundraising. Griffiths seems to have been unconventional -- after all, she did just pick up with her sister in tow and take off, uninvited, for the U.S. with the express intention of finding and working with Douglass. She also seemed aggressive in her fundraising. She and her sister stayed with the Douglass family and Douglass's printer, John Dick, in Rochester. Then the sister, Eliza, up and married Dick, and they both set up shop in Canada (I think I may have found them in Illinois in the 1880s). With the sister and printer gone, there's Julia, unescorted, living in the Douglass home. Make of that what you will, and the Boston abolitionists used it as a good way to slander Douglass and the Rochester abolitionists. Eventually, Griffiths moved in with -- ooh, I'm forgetting their names right now -- then she returned to England to continue to fundraise there. I have to check my notes on the details, but she helped him escape from the U.S. when he was implicated in the John Brown raid. They stayed good friends for ages, and he visited her when he and his second wife, Helen, traveled to Europe.
I don't think that they had a sexual relationship, personally. Of course, if they did, then Douglass was essentially abusing Anna by conducting the affair with Julia right there in their home. The two important issues that come from the rumored affair involve miscegnation and the use of sexual innuendo to slander Douglass. Douglass went on to have a sexual relationship with Ottilia Assing, the German journalist who arrived just after Griffiths left (and, really, I wanted to know what sort of birth control she used), and with Helen Pitts, his second wife. In the case of Griffiths, miscengenation seemed to go beyond what even the most radical abolitionists were willing to accept. If nothing else, they knew that the subject made many people squeamish, what with the stereotypes of black male sexuality, and used that to attack him for becoming their competition.
There, you have most of the outline of an article! Certainly of my post on them!
Northwestern New York produced quite a few activists, didn't it?
OK, now I have more questions (figures, eh?).
I read the Wiki on Chapman. Was her keeping tabs and negative portrayals of Douglass an issue of a power struggle for leadership of the Abolitionist movement(s) or was it because she felt him "out of his place"/racist (or both).
"With the sister and printer gone, there's Julia, unescorted, living in the Douglass home." Unescorted single women are always suspect; some things haven't changed!
"The two important issues that come from the rumored affair involve miscegnation and the use of sexual innuendo to slander Douglass." Either one would be dynamite; together, yikes. How did Douglass/Griffith respond to the rumors? Any public reaction?
The other issue, I think, is that slavery was bad, and black people should be free. But only when free = behaving as they should, as dictated by the white upper classes. Really, Chapman was undermining her own arguments for abolition. Unless, of course, abolition was less about blacks being free than it was about whites not owning other human beings.
"Northwestern New York produced quite a few activists, didn't it?" That is a heck of an understatement. I've been reading scads about the Burned-Over District; it's fascinating. I'm working on getting my paws on a couple of archaeology articles, one at Gerrit Smith's house, another at Ellen White's house. One author I read actually argued that it *was* something in the water (Cholera, specifically associated with the canal) that played a role in the religious and activist efflorescence up there mid-century.
More questions are always good!
Yes on both Chapman counts. The AASS tended to frown upon ideological differences among its members, and keep black abolitionist in supporting roles. While some of those supporting roles included speaking and writing, if you throw in the fact that black abolitionists -- especially fugitives -- had significantly different perspectives on abolitionist tactics, the prohibition of divergence from the party line, well, and the lower wages earned by the black speakers, then you have lots of room for lots of questions. That was one of Douglass's reasons for moving to Rochester. He would be no man's slave, chattel or wage, plantation or movement.
Douglass and Griffith maintained their innocence. In one hilarious (at least to a big ole heathen like myself) incident, the spirit world intervened during a seance to refute the slander. The rumors began to interfere with the work of activism, which was the reason that she moved to -- dammit! I keep forgetting their name, I knew it yesterday! -- the other abolitionists' house and then back to England. Again, the reaction to this possible union shows some of the limits within the abolitionist movement.
I really need to get off of my butt (or would that be ON to my butt) and right that article.
Cholera? That reminds me of the ergot theory about the Salem withcraft trials!
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