Was frederick douglass gay

In reality, Helen and Frederick were 21 years apart. Criticisms from both white people and Black people targeted the interracial nature of the marriage. Interracial marriage, especially between a Black man and a white woman, was controversial and rare in America’s predominantly white society. Douglass and Murray remained married for 44 years until her death in Two years later, Douglass broke another marriage equality barrier when he married the white feminist Helen Pitts.

Douglass understood himself to be mixed race as the child of his slave mother and a white slave owner, although no written records document his birth. Vice JD Vance joined Theo Von's podcast for an episode filled with strange jokes at the expense of abolitionist Frederick Douglass—repeatedly riffing on a baseless claim that Douglass fought to end slavery so he could “meet men.”.

Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, c. February 14, [a] – February 20, ) was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. He was the most important leader of the movement for African-American civil rights in the 19th century. Answers must be in-depth and comprehensive, or they will be removed. Did Frederick Douglass ever mention his views on homosexuality/sexual deviance?

For example, did he say anything about Oscar Wilde in personal letters? Archived post. New comments cannot be posted and votes cannot be cast. Based in Los Angeles, Sidney Morrison, a retired teacher and school principal, now works as an educational consultant and leadership coach in Southern California.

He has won two major awards from the Association of California School Administrations and is a proud recipient of a Bronze Star, earned as a medical corpsman during the Vietnam War. Sydney Morrison: I became interested in Frederick Douglass as a young teacher. I taught U. Eventually, I decided I wanted to write a novel about him and introduce him to a greater reading public.

I know scholarship sometimes intimidates people. I thought if I could write a novel to introduce Douglass, more people would know about him. It is a lifetime project. He lived [the] full span of the nineteenth century, so he experienced a great deal. I wanted to convey that dramatic story of self-creation: the story of a genius born in enslavement, who became himself by his own ambition, his influence on people, both white and Black.

Rumpus: Was there a defining moment that you decided you were going to write about this? History was my major, and the Antebellum Civil War period was one of my favorite subjects. In discovering Frederick Douglass, and through his first autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave , he talks about the moment when he decided to fight back after months and months of physical and emotional abuse.

It really struck me as a teenager. He said in his first book that he was willing to die for his own sense of self rather than continue to be enslaved—especially spiritually, because he was verbally, physically, and psychologically attacked by a man who was hired to break his spirit and almost succeeded. Douglass, in fact, contemplated suicide because the abuse was so unrelenting. Then one August in the summer of that year, he had a series of beatings, described in my novel as a pivotal point in his life when he was going to stand up for himself and never back down.

That was very inspiring to me as a young person. He stood his ground again and again throughout the course of his life and got in a lot of trouble for it. That incident inspired me to read more about him. This was during my time as a student in the s, when a lot was going on in terms of civil rights and war protests. Morrison: Research, which I enjoy very much, is both an inspiration and a trap.

did frederick douglass

You can find yourself going down many, many paths of interest. I despaired of this sometimes because Douglass was a prolific producer of words. He wrote millions of words, and he gave thousands of speeches. At the time, I was focusing on his growing relationship with a German journalist. It was in the summer of when she came to live with him, so the story in the novel is told from her perspective.

That happens a lot. Even biographers have had to make serious decisions about what to include. Rumpus: How did you whittle down the information to what is crucial for the story? How did you ultimately decide what should be included? Morrison: You have to make a variety of decisions in the rewriting of a novel, many times. I did it with the help of my agent and a friend who was a journalist.