Was Frederick Douglass America’s First Media-savvy Activist?

We’ve always known who Frederick Douglass was. His 1845 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave: Written by Himself stands within the American canon as the best-known of all slave narratives. Shortly after escaping slavery, he became a key figurehead of the abolitionist movement to end slavery. He was a prodigious public voice, speaking nationwide and publishing newspapers. He had the ear of presidents, notably Abraham Lincoln, and he was appointed to a diplomatic post in his later years.

We’ve always known what he looked like that steely gaze, his regal mane of hair, seemingly always stern and hyper-serious, looking out at us from portraits, murals, sculptures, and even postage stamps.

While our impressions of Douglass are fixed, however, his representations of himself were not. Throughout his life, he took extensive care to not only keep himself and his story in the public realm but also to adjust and amend his messages as the years advanced. We may think the inclination and ability to not only present but also remake and remodel one’s public image is a recent phenomenon, more the milieu of reality-show celebrities than political change agents, but two recent, noteworthy works of scholarship show how Douglass’ attention to his self-representation predates our modern malleability and was part and parcel to his becoming one of the most famous and influential Americans of the 19th Century.

That attention began with his telling of his own life story, which he updated more than once. The initial version of Narrative is the most famous telling, but University of Maryland professor Robert Levine explores the others in The Lives of Frederick Douglass. Instead of writing subsequent memoirs following his initial Narrative (think Maya Angelou’s series of memoirs proceeding from I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings) Levine traces how Douglass frequently tweaked his ur-text to match his ever-evolving opinions and experiences.

The first tweak came less than a year after Narrative was published, while Douglass was in England on a speaking tour. This was actually the first of two revisions to Narrative Douglass would oversee while abroad, notes Levine. Apart from some cosmetic changes to the layout and light editing for the benefit of British readers, Douglass’ first new Narrative reflected the first stirrings away from the abolitionist movement through which he became a sensation (and which published the first Narrative).

In this version, Douglass has the final word on what he stands for and what he’s doing, as opposed to William Lloyd Garrison, the white abolitionist who led the movement and championed Douglass as part of it. The second European version, published in 1846, shows an even greater distance, with Douglass coming into his own voice as a writer and activist. By the time he returned to America in 1847, one of his critics referred to the original Narrative as “a narrative of his previous life.”

Levine’s literature review of Douglass’ work continues to his only novella, The Heroic Slave (1853), a retelling of the 1841 rebellion aboard the American slave ship Creole. He shows how Douglass’ representation of the rebellion’s leader, Madison Washington, echoed his emerging self (and self-image) as a freedom fighter. That self was further articulated two years later in My Bondage and My Freedom, his second autobiography. It expands upon Narrative by taking a broader look at his own life as a slave and sets his relationship with Garrison’s abolitionist movement once and for all in the rear-view mirror.

By the time of his third autobiography, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, Written by Himself, much had happened to Douglass, and America — most notably, the Civil War. But Levine’s analysis of Life and Times here is most concerned with Douglass’ long process of reunion with Thomas Auld, his former owner. The notion that the fiery activist would want to visit the man who once kept his bondage might be a head-scratcher for contemporary readers, but Douglass had his reasons. He wanted to learn more about his familial past, and he wanted the moment to support his call for blacks to remain in the South, even as life after the war began to harden for them considerably.

Still, Life and Times stands as Douglass’ concluding word on his past life as a slave. As with the change in his attitude towards Garrison and the abolitionists, Levine maps out what remained constant, and what didn’t, in Douglass’ discussions of those years, leading up to his final autobiography.

Douglass would revise Life and Times, but not as swiftly as he did Narrative. The first version, published in 1881, was succeeded by an 1892 version that included a roundup of his travels between the two editions, a look back at his grand experience against the backdrop of aging, and more reflections about the intractable nature of race and politics in America. These were issues that Douglass, who died in 1895, never stopped working through, in public and private. The written word was his primary vehicle for that work, and Levine clearly shows how Douglass amplified some parts of his life and de-emphasized others in his writings and speeches as his views and purposes evolved over time.

Considering the remarkable arc of his life — born into slavery, a beloved statesman when he died — and his centrality to America’s conflicted handling of race during those years, it’s not surprising that his thinking would take on different shadings as he moved through life. But by making autobiography the primary medium for exploring the questions of struggle, freedom and unity — as opposed to bundling up his speeches, for example, or publishing a string of manifestos — Douglass placed himself at the center of his writings on those issues, just as he was at the center (or close to it) of much of the political action. His was a radical approach to discussing politics, race, and self: rooted in the personal but directed towards the universal, in a manner unlike any other so far in the heritage of black protest literature.

Douglass placed himself at the center of the story in an even more direct way, one that’s been hiding in plain sight all these years. He was the most photographed American of the 19th Century — more than even the great Lincoln. We know that steely gaze and mane of hair by memory because they’ve been oft-reproduced and interpreted; that in turn is because his visage was ubiquitous to begin with.

In Picturing Frederick Douglass, John Stauffer, Zoe Trodd and Celeste-Marie Bernier collect and explain the 160 photographs of Douglass, some in crowd shots but mostly portraits of him seated before the camera. Its research is exhaustive and its presentation exquisite; this book could easily have pride of place in a historical library and on your coffee table.

Douglass was an early adapter of photography, which was just burgeoning as a medium around the time he escaped slavery, and during the Civil War gave several speeches linking photography and freedom (which are also published here). Apart from showing his transition through life (from his first years as a public speaker to, literally, his deathbed), Picturing shows how Douglass used photography as an extension of his activism.

At the simplest level, it charts Douglass’ struggles with how he should engage the camera until he finally settled on that unflinching gaze (there are a few pictures of him smiling, but not many). Moreover, Picturing details how that choice was part of a broader conception: that photography could convey the essence of a person, and once that was done, it would be harder to deny anyone’s basic humanity. Thus, he chose to look serious to ensure he (and all black people by extension) would be taken seriously.

Picturing also touches upon Douglass as brand manager, with the brand being Frederick Douglass. His writings and speeches had made him a celebrity with a passionate fan base, which was all the better to get his core messages heard. He often had additional copies of his photos made so he could sell a few to his many admirers, thus extending his brand even further (that applied to his books as well: Levine explains how Douglass sold copies of the revised Narrative to help subsidize his tour of England).

In fact, artists would extend his brand and visage some more, by incorporating riffs off Douglass photos into their own creations and homages. One 1873 photo of Douglass as elder statesman, for example, found its way into a poster for an 1895 “exposition of negro life and character”, a 1945 union flyer, a 1963 cover of Ebony magazine marking the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, and a 1990 Chicago mural (alongside Martin Luther King, Jr., former Chicago mayor Harold Washington, and Michael Jackson).

Picturing concludes with pictures of Douglass’ descendants, and an essay by his great-great-great grandson, Kenneth B. Morris, Jr., who had no idea of the photographic legacy he’d inherited until contacted for this project. Morris, who also happens to be related to Booker T. Washington (Douglass’ great-grandson married Washington’s granddaughter; Morris represents the second generation of that united bloodline), writes of the struggles his ancestors faced in living up to Douglass’ legacy. Upon looking at the photo from Douglass’ deathbed, writes Morris, “I am reminded of the debt that I owe to him and to all those who came before me, upon whose shoulders I stand. Liberty’s torch has been passed, and it is my obligation, by birthright, to continue his fight for freedom.”

Morris, who with his mother established a foundation to educate people about slavery both past and present, believes his ancestor would be vigorously advocating for the use today of “art and technology” to bring about change and social justice. If these two invaluable contributions to our appreciation of Frederick Douglass are any indication, I’ll go that one better: he himself would still be in the mix, still using every available medium to advance his causes, speak forcefully on the issues, and muse on the ever-unsettled nature of race and self. That means, in addition to his newspaper, speeches and books, he’d be all over social media — and his blog, tweets and Instagram posts would likely have thousands of followers.