Frederick Douglass – A Black slave who rose to major prominence
Except in Kentucky’s social studies standards
It’s hard to honor Black History Month without some comments about Frederick Douglass. His is a really remarkable story.
Douglas was born into slavery 1818 in Maryland. He experienced a number of the uncertainties American slaves had to cope with during his early life including separation from his mother at an early age and being moved from household to household at the whim of white masters. It wasn’t a beginning likely to end in prominence.
At the age of eight, yet another move for Douglass brought him into the house of Sophia Auld, who started to teach him how to read, a most unusual thing for a slave to experience at that time. The lessons ended abruptly, however, as soon as Sophia’s husband, Hugh, learned about them.
Literacy lessons would spoil a slave in Hugh’s opinion. And Hugh had the law on his side, as well. It was illegal in Maryland to teach slaves to read.
But Douglass became a reader, anyway. By 1834 he was teaching other Blacks to read and write in a sabbath school using the Holy Bible.
By 1838 Douglass had enough of slavery and escaped to New York City. But his freedom was precarious as the city was alive with slave catchers and people more than willing to expose runaway slaves for money.
So, Douglass moved on to Bedford, Massachusetts with the idea of working in the ship building industry using skills he had learned in Maryland. However, white ship builders of that era refused to work along side Blacks. So, Douglass had to survive doing common labor jobs, instead.
However, his entry into Massachusetts soon opened up an entirely new line of work. By 1841, Douglass had caught the attention of key abolitionist leaders who were impressed with his skills as an orator as well as a writer. As a result, he became a paid activist in the abolition movement.
In 1845, Douglass published his first book, “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself.” The book was quite popular, especially in Europe, but it also exposed Douglass as an escaped slave, and his owners wanted their property back.
So, Douglass escaped to Europe, where some wealthy admirers bought his freedom from his former slaveholder. In consequence, Douglass moved back to the United States finally a truly free man and he began a new career as a newspaper publisher while continuing to be active in the abolition movement.
When the Civil War broke out, Douglass pushed for Black soldiers in the army and became a recruiter for the Massachusetts 54th Regiment, a unit manned with Black soldiers in which his sons, Lewis and Charles, served.
During the war Douglass met a number of times with President Abraham Lincoln to discuss issues concerning both Black soldiers and civilians.
After the Civil War, Douglass went on to hold many jobs in government such as being named the first ever Black US Marshall and becoming the Recorder of Deeds for the City of Washington, DC. He would also remain highly active in efforts to improve the quality of life for Black Americans.
Thus, Douglass is rightly renowned today for his dedication to civil rights and his impressive rise from slavery to the highest levels of American society.
Renowned in most places, that is. You see, the current Kentucky Academic Standards for Social Studies, created by Kentucky teachers and adopted in April 2019, never mention Douglass. It actually required action by the Kentucky Legislature, not educators, in 2022 legislation to finally insert something about Douglass into a pending change to those social studies standards.
It’s likely to become a historic irony that Kentucky’s Republican-dominated legislature had to get rather deeply involved in education standards just to insure people of Douglass’ character are not ignored.
Let’s hope this lesson is learned when the social studies standards come up for their next full review in 2025. There’s a lot more missing that Kentucky’s students deserve to learn about and a lot of teachers need to understand that if it isn’t in the standards, there is no way to ensure that every student will learn important history like the story of Frederick Douglass.
Resources: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Frederick-Douglass
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Douglass
https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/frederick-douglass