Frederick Douglass

by Booker T. Washington

The vast audience that listened to these words of praise sadly followed Douglass’s remains to their resting-place in Mount Hope Cemetery, beside the graves of his little daughter Anna, and his beloved wife, the mother of his children. Few great citizens of the state of New York were ever more signally honored than was he in these last funeral rites by the citizens of Rochester. And this was not all. The suggestion of a monument by Mr. Gannett in his funeral address found quick and hearty response from the people of the city in an effort led by John W. Thompson without regard to race or color. Not only in that place, but throughout the country, the idea of erecting a bronze statue of Douglass, at his home, was taken up and acted upon. Generous contributions began to pour in from every direction. The great state of New York, that had honored him in so many ways during his lifetime, appropriated out of the public treasury, the sum of $3,000 for this purpose.

The whole amount was soon raised. The ceremonies attending the unveiling of the monument partook of the character of a state event. Special excursions brought multitudes of people from all parts of New York. The Governor, Theodore Roosevelt, and many other state officials, were in attendance. His address, so impressively delivered, was the climax of the splendid ceremonies. His tribute to the great Negro was inspired by a sympathetic appreciation of the man and a profound sense of the significance of his life. He reminded the vast concourse of people that the lesson taught by the colored statesman was “the lesson of truth, of honesty, of fearless courage, of striving for the right; the lesson of distinguished and fearless performance of civic duty.” The bronze figure of the great Negro stands in a conspicuous site in the heart of Rochester, and is as much a monument to the generous spirit of its citizens, as to the worth and achievements of him whose career it commemorates.

Douglass lived long enough to see the triumph of the cause for which he had dreamed, hoped, and labored. But he had lived long enough, also, to realize that what slavery had been two hundred years and more in doing could not be wholly undone in thirty or forty years; could, in fact, hardly be wholly undone since the Future is always built out of the materials of the Past.

In his later years he came to understand that the problem, on the work of solving which he and others had entered with such high hopes in the Reconstruction period, was larger and more complicated than it at that time seemed. If the realization of this fact was a disappointment to him, it did not cause him to lose courage. His faith in the future remained unshaken. He was sane and sanguine to the end. Least of all did he allow himself to feel aggrieved or become embittered by any personal inconvenience that he encountered because of the color of his skin. At the conclusion of his Autobiography he says:

“It may possibly be inferred from what I have said of the prevalence of prejudice, and the practice of proscription, that I have had a very miserable sort of life, or that I must be remarkably insensible to public aversion. Neither inference is true. I have neither been miserable because of the ill-feeling of those about me, nor indifferent to popular approval; and I think, upon the whole, I have passed a tolerably cheerful and even joyful life. I have never felt myself isolated since I entered the field to plead the cause of the slave, and demand equal rights for all. In every town and city where it has been my lot to speak, there have been raised up for me friends of both colors to cheer and strengthen me in my work. I have always felt, too, that I had on my side all the invisible forces of the moral government of the universe.”

Frederick Douglass’s life fell in the period of war, of controversy, and of fierce party strife. The task which was assigned to him was, on the whole, one of destruction and liberation, rather than construction and reconciliation. Circumstances and his own temperament made him the aggressive champion of his people, and of all others to whom custom or law denied the privileges which he had learned to regard as the inalienable possessions of men. He was for liberty, at all times, and in all shapes. Seeking the ballot for the Negro, he was ardently in favor of granting the same privilege to woman. Holding, as he did, that there were certain rights and dignities that belong to man as man, he was opposed to discrimination in our immigration laws in favor of the white races of Europe and against the yellow races of Asia. In religion, also, he was disposed to unite himself with the extreme liberal movement. In all this he was at once an American, and a man of his time.

But Mr. Douglass was not merely an American, sharing the convictions and aspirations of the most progressive men of his day. He was also a Negro, and the lesson of his life is addressed in the most particular way to the members of his own race: “To those who have suffered in slavery, I can say, I, too, have suffered. To those who have taken some risks and encountered hardships in the flight from bondage, I can say, I, too, have endured and risked. To those who have battled for liberty, brotherhood, and citizenship, I can say, I, too, have battled. And to those who have lived to enjoy the fruits of liberty I can say, I, too, live and rejoice. If I have pushed my example too far, I beg them to remember that I have written in part for the encouragement of a class whose aspirations need the stimulus of success.”

And then he ends: “I have aimed to assure them that knowledge may be obtained under difficulties; that poverty may give place to competency; that obscurity is not an absolute bar to distinction; and that a way is open to welfare and happiness to all who will resolutely and wisely pursue that way; that neither slavery, stripes, imprisonment, nor proscription need extinguish self-respect, crush manly ambition, or paralyze effort; that no power outside of himself can prevent a man from sustaining an honorable character and a useful relation to his day and generation; that neither institutions nor friends can make a race to stand unless it has strength in its own legs; that there is no power in the world which can be relied on to help the weak against the strong, or the simple against the wise; that races, like individuals, must stand or fall by their own merits.”

As has been already indicated in the course of this narrative, Frederick Douglass never formulated any definite religious creed. But no one who reads the story of his life and work can doubt that he was guided and inspired through his whole career by the highest moral and religious motives. The evidence of this is not merely his steadfast optimism and faith in the future, but in the sense in which he regarded his personal mission. From his own point of view, the work he did for his race was not merely a duty, it was a high privilege:

“Forty years of my life have been given to the cause of my people, and if I had forty years more they should all be sacredly given to the same great cause. If I have done something for that cause, I am, after all, more a debtor to it than it is a debtor to me.”