Claiming Frederick Douglass as our own

Who can rightly claim Frederick Douglass as one of their own?

As we look back on Black History Month, let’s remember that it was also the bicentennial of the birth of Frederick Douglass, orator, writer, publisher and three-time visitor to West Chester.

Yale history professor and respected Douglass biographer David Blight wrote in the New York Times under the headline “How the Right Co-Opts Frederick Douglass,” that “conservatives have cherry-picked his words to advance their narrow visions of libertarianism.”

Douglass Leadership Institute Fellow Jeremy C. Hunt makes nearly the opposite claim in his online article, “Frederick Douglass was a Christian and a patriot – why is this so hard for the Left to accept?”

Who’s right? Both, with a few minor points of exception. That two such apparently conflicting views can both be largely right is also why Frederick Douglass is such a fascinating figure.

Republicans claim him as one of their own, because he was in fact a Republican. One of his most-often circulated quotations is “I am a Republican, a black, dyed-in-the-wool Republican” although the Republican party of his day was not the same as the party today.

Democrats claim him as one of their own because they see him as the father of the civil rights movement, notwithstanding the one hundred years when theirs was the party of white supremacy, racial discrimination, lynching and the KKK.

Christians claim Douglass as one of their own not only because he led Bible studies, quoted from the Bible more than any other source in his writings and was a licensed preacher in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion denomination, but also because in his autobiography, he described his own conversion and acceptance of Jesus Christ as his savior in a testimony that rings true to Evangelicals even today.

Yet secularists claim him as one of their own because he was so sharply critical of the racism and hypocrisy in most mainstream churches.

Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, writing last year in the Washington Post in an article titled “Five Myths About Frederick Douglass,” said that Douglass “openly critiqued traditional doctrines” and that his library contained books by philosophers who “viewed Jesus as a moral person but not the son of God.” That’s pretty weak evidence of Douglass’ actual beliefs. As Jeremy Hunt wrote, “It doesn’t take a degree in theology to see the stark contrast between Douglass’ faith and the cherry-picked theology that today’s activists espouse.”

Similarly, Douglass is claimed as a patriot who loved America and revered her founding documents. “Take the Constitution according to its plain reading. I defy the presentation of a single pro-slavery clause in it. Interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a glorious liberty document.”

Speaking of American Ideals, he wrote, “No people ever entered upon the pathway of nations, with higher and grander ideas of justice, liberty and humanity than ourselves.” Yet when he was in exile in England after the publication of his first autobiography had made him a hunted man in this country, he also said ““I have no love for America, as such … I have no patriotism. I have no country.”

Douglass scholar and biographer Dr. C. James Trotman of West Chester University once said, “when you study Douglass, you will encounter ambiguities. My advice is to let the ambiguities rise. Do not try to resolve them.

Let the ambiguities rise.” His clear implication is that the student, reader or audience should experience the full complexity of this remarkable man and decide for themselves what lessons to take from him.

The truth is that Douglas was all of these: Christian, prophetic critic of the church, loyal Republican, social justice agitator, patriot and skeptic of nationalism.

Dr. Trotman’s challenge has become my own, as I prepare to produce a feature film on Douglass’ extraordinary life. Getting the full Douglass right is both important and personal to me, because of our local connection to him: his last public speech was delivered on the campus of what is now West Chester University, just nineteen days before he died.

It is too easy to present Frederick Douglass as a Christian Republican patriot or a secular progressive agitator, but either description by itself fails to appreciate the real depth of the man. He was all of them.

When we pass by the wonderful statue of him by sculptor Richard Blake on the University’s DeBaptiste Plaza, let us make the effort to recall him in the fullness of his contributions to our national culture.

Colin Hanna West Chester