“Hear him!”
“Douglass! Frederick Douglass!”
They shouted until the livid little divine sank helpless into his seat.
Frederick Douglass, “the young lion,” had come into his full strength. He stood facing the audience which filled every corner of Covent Garden, and felt power coursing all along his veins. He resolved that no man or woman within the sound of his voice that afternoon should ever be able to say “I did not know!”
According to the account written by the Reverend Cox that appeared in his denominational paper, the New York Evangelist, Douglass’ speech was “a perversion, an abuse, and an iniquity against the law of reciprocal righteousness—inspired, I believe, from beneath, and not from above. This Douglass,” said Reverend Cox, “denounced American temperance societies and churches as a community of enemies of his people. He talked to the American delegates as if he had been our schoolmaster and we his docile and devoted pupils.”
And Covent Garden rocked as it seldom had in all its history.
“We all wanted to reply,” the account concluded, “but it was too late. The whole theater seemed taken with the spirit of the Ephesian uproar; they were boisterous in the extreme, and poor Mr. Kirk could hardly obtain a moment to say a few well-chosen words.”
The applause was like thunder. When Douglass bowed and tried to leave the platform, people rushed forward to seize his hand. They blocked his path. Men and women wept. They shouted until they were hoarse. Nobody heard or heeded “poor Mr. Kirk.” Douglass left the theater at the head of a procession of Londoners, who continued to cheer him as they came out on the street. Curious passersby swelled the ranks. They followed him down Bow Street to Russell and past the Drury Lane Theater. But just beyond the theater Frederick stopped. He faced the crowd and at a motion from him they closed in around him.
“My friends,” he told them, “never in my life have people been so good to me. But I have spoken not to arouse you to cheers, but to move you to action. I have told you of slavery, of oppression, of wrongdoing which is going on in this world. I tell you now that this is true not only of black slaves in America, but of white slaves here in Europe. My friends, these are not times for cheering. Go to your homes, to your shops and to your offices! Pass my words along and find the job that you can do to bring about the freedom of all peoples. Go now, quickly!”
He stood facing them until they had dispersed, looking back over their shoulders, talking excitedly.