Source of book: I own this
This is my second selection for Black History Month this year. I previously blogged about Mules and Men by Zora Neale Hurston. You can read all of my BHM selections as well as other books by black authors here.
Historian, professor, and author David Blight, whose biography of Douglass is arguably the definitive one, has said that it was Frederick Douglass, not Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was the greatest American orator of the 19th Century. And he is likely correct.
[Note: Let me make a plug for Blight’s outstanding free lecture series for his Yale University class on the Civil War and Reconstruction. I learned a tremendous amount from that class during my lunch breaks not long ago.]
Frederick Douglass is one of those people who are larger than life, one of the true heroes of his time. Born into enslavement, he defied his enslavers and learned how to read. He eventually managed to escape, fled all the way to the North, and eventually connected with the abolitionist movement.
To say that his speech made an impression is to undersell it. He burst onto the scene to shocked applause followed by thunderous acclaim. He wrote and spoke with eloquence, passion, and an unbowed confidence in his belief that slavery was a vile evil, a rank injustice, and - as this book makes clear - diametrically opposed to any possible Christian value.
And he was right.
Douglass would go on to a renowned career as a lecturer, not only in the United States, but abroad. After the Civil War and the end of enslavement, he continued to advocate for full civil rights for African Americans - and for women’s rights as well. He also served as ambassador to Haiti under the Harrison administration.
I did want to mention Douglass’ name. The Frederick he was given at birth, and he insisted on keeping it. Like most of the enslaved, his surname was that of his enslaver - and indeed, Douglass strongly suspected that his first enslaver was actually his biological father, as his father was clearly white. (He was separated from his mother as an infant, and she died soon thereafter.)
When Douglass escaped, he used a series of names to cover his tracks. The last one of those was Johnson, but he soon realized that there were so many Frederick Johnsons in New Bedford that he needed something to distinguish himself from others.
He settled on Douglass after a friend suggested it - the friend had been reading The Lady of the Lake. Most editions these days use the single “s” but two letters were also used.
There are so many other fascinating details of his life, but I will leave those for when I read his biography.
As for this book, it is Douglass’ own account of his life, from birth through his escape to freedom. It thus ends when he was around 21 years old (he never knew his date of birth.) The book also omits nearly all details of his escape - as he explains, if he gave details, it would make it more difficult for other enslaved persons to do as he did. Which is certainly fair enough.
Douglass’ writing is excellent: he tells a good story, includes enough detail to be interesting, but not so much as to make the story drag. His account of himself is interwoven with his feelings from childhood that slavery was morally wrong, and that he himself was having a wrong done to him as a human being.
He also refuses to give moral cover for enslavers, which is undoubtedly why this book (and others written by African Americans) are being targeted by modern day book bans - white supremacists haven’t disappeared, and are now emboldened by Trump.
It is this moral clarity that is so refreshing and breathtaking. Douglass is unafraid to say what every true Christian should be saying: that slavery has always been wrong, and fully incompatible with following Christ. Full stop. And the corollary, that racism in any form is anti-christian and morally evil.
And that includes MAGA “christianity” as well. It is everything anti-christian, from top to bottom, and is in fact just a new iteration of Confederate “christianity.”
I’ll be quoting from Douglass’ epilogue extensively, where he explains that he is not anti-religion, but rather anti-evil. It’s good stuff.
The book also contains a preface, written by prominent abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, and a letter from Wendell Phillips, a lawyer and activist who was viewed by many African Americans as "the one white American wholly color-blind and free from race prejudice.” Good men both.
I decided to quote a bit from Garrison, because he had some incredible things to say.
It may, perhaps, be fairly questioned, whether any other portion of the population of the earth could have endured the privations, sufferings and horrors of slavery, without having become more degraded in the scale of humanity than the slaves of African descent. Nothing has been left undone to cripple their intellects, darken their minds, debase their moral nature, obliterate all traces of their relationship to mankind; and yet how wonderfully they have sustained the mighty load of a most frightful bondage, under which they have been groaning for centuries!
Garrison goes on to cite the case of a white American sailor who was enslaved for three years before being rescued, and by that time had gone insane.
He had this to say about the book itself:
He who can peruse it without a tearful eye, a heaving breast, an afflicted spirit, - without being filled with an unutterable abhorrence of slavery and all its abettors, and animated with a determination to seek the immediate overthrow of that execrable system, - without trembling for the fate of this country in the hands of a righteous God, who is ever on the side of the oppressed, and whose arm is not shortened that it cannot save, - must have a flinty heart, and be qualify to act the part of a trafficker “in slaves and the soles of men.”
I have wondered that myself - why did the enslavers have no fear of God? And also:
O, how accursed is that system, which entombs the godlike mind of man, defaces the divine image, reduces those who were crowned with glory and honor to a level with four-footed beasts, and exalts the deal in human flesh above all that is called God! Why should its existence be prolonged one hour? Is it not evil, only evil, and that continually? What does its presence imply but the absence of all fear of God, all regard for man, on the part of the people of the United States? Heaven speed its eternal overthrow!
Again, Garrison says out loud the truth, that enslavers dehumanize the enslaved, and do so to feed their own greed.
Douglass provides pithy commentary throughout his story of his life, and there are definitely some quotable lines. For example, his discussion of the songs created by the enslaved is on point.
I have been utterly astonished since I came to the north, to find persons who could speak of the singing, among slaves, as evidence of the contentment and happiness. It is impossible to conceive of a greater mistake. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears. I have often sung to drown my sorrow, but seldom to express my happiness.
I suspect the same sort of people thought the blues were happy songs, but I also am fairly certain that this was just wishful thinking to paper over the pangs of conscience.
Later in the book, Douglass talks about how enslavers would encourage the enslaved to spend their holidays in trivial games and drunkenness. Douglass and a few others secretly spent their time teaching others enslaved to read.
It was understood, among all who came, that there must be as little display about it as possible. It was necessary to keep our religious masters at St. Michael’s unacquainted with the fact that, instead of spending the Sabbath in wrestling, boxing, and drinking whisky, we were trying to learn how to read the will of God; for they had much rather see us engaged in those degrading sports, than to see us behaving like intellectual, moral, and accountable beings.
There is a good bit of this attitude left in our culture. As much as I enjoy watching certain sports, there are far too many white fans who still see black athletes in this same light - as freakish entertainers who should just “shut up and play.”
One part of the story that I found particularly fascinating was Douglass’ account of how he learned to read. He got a very brief start from the wife of his enslaver’s brother (who was “borrowing” him to serve her son), but her husband soon put a stop to that. (An interesting part of the story is her moral deterioration from a kind woman to a harsh one as one of the side effects of enslaving. As I have noted in our own times, moral stupidity leads to this kind of deterioration.)
Later, though, Douglass, not to be denied an education, started spending his free time hanging out with the impoverished white immigrant children in his Baltimore neighborhood. (Remember, segregation is NOT natural, which is why it had to be enforced by law…) They often lacked food, while he had as much as he wanted - part of being a “good” enslaver was to keep the human livestock well fed - so he “traded bread for knowledge” as he put it.
He also managed to get a hold of a book of speeches, which included some abolitionist materials from free-born black Lewis Sheridan.
The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers. I could regard them in no other light than a band of successful robbers, who had left their homes, and gone to Africa, and stolen us from our homes, and in a strange land reduced us to slavery. I loathed them as being the meanest as well as the most wicked of men.
I think Douglass is right. At its core, enslavement is about stealing labor from another human, profiting off their work. Slavery was the most obvious manifestation of this, but wage slavery is also theft (the Bible has a lot to say about it, actually), as are other forms of economic oppression - all of them allow some humans to reap the benefit of the labor of others.
Douglass admits that his hard-won knowledge didn’t bring him happiness. It was only hope of freedom that kept him alive.
I often found myself regretting my own existence, and wishing myself dead; and but for the hope of being free, I have no doubt but that I should have killed myself, or done something for which I should have been killed.
While my own experiences are clearly nowhere comparable to enslavement, I have felt rather in the same way. Authoritarian Fundamentalism is its own form of enslavement, and as a teen, with my life being contracted by Gothard’s cult rather than expanded as it should have as I transitioned to adulthood, I felt a lot of frustration. One of these days, I think I need to write again about those years, and why I was not allowed to go to a normal college or choose my own career. In any case, I took my lumps, knowing that at some point, I would be able to move out and make my own decisions, even if my parents disapproved. (And they most certainly have made their displeasure clear about many things in the years since.)
Douglass also tells the story of how one of his enslavers found religion. And what it did to him.
I indulged a faint hope that his conversion would lead him to emancipate his slaves, and that, if he did not do this, it would, at any rate, make him more kind and humane. I was disappointed in both of these respects. It neither made him to be humane to his slaves, nor to emancipate them. If it had any effect on his character, it made him more cruel and hateful in all his ways; for I believe him to have been a much worse man after his conversion than before. Prior to his conversion, he relied upon his own depravity to shield and sustain him in his savage barbarity; but after his conversion, he found religious sanction and support for his slaveholding cruelty.
This has been my experience as well. The more “devout” a person is, the better they feel about their cruelty. I am reminded of an elder of our former church, who made a fairly big show of bowing to the Lord, and worshiping, but who would then refer to undocumented immigrant families as “fugitives from justice” and those of us who would help them as deserving criminal charges.
I also have observed this in my own parents, who, as they increasingly embraced legalism, and authoritarian fundamentalism, lost the moral values they instilled in me as a child. Specifically, they went from people who impressed on me that embrace of refugees and immigrants was both a core Christian value, but also a core American value, to calling the existence of other ethnic groups in our country a “problem” that Trump was finally “doing something about” with his cruel policies and rhetoric. And saying that the problem with America is that we let all these refugees in, and we should just “shut that whole thing down.” What happened???
This coincided with the embrace of legalistic rules about music, clothing, and gender roles. The more “piety,” the less morality. It’s pretty predictable. Legalistic piety provides the endorphins of being a good person, but without the need to actually act morally and empathetically. This in turn leads to increasing moral stupidity, disappearing empathy, and judgmental self-righteousness.
At one point, Douglass was turned over to a certain Mr. Covey, who was renowned for “breaking” slaves. Among other things, Covey was fucking his enslaved woman, as a great many enslavers did - since he wasn’t rich, he bought a “breeder” and thus increased his stock of enslaved people - his OWN CHILDREN. God, this whole thing was horrible. And he went to great lengths to deceive his enslaved that he was leaving, so he could “catch” them slacking off.
Poor man! such was his disposition, and success at deceiving, I do verily believe that he sometimes deceived himself into the solemn belief, that he was a sincere worshiper of the most high God; and this, too, at a time when he may be said to have been guilty of compelling his woman slave to commit the sin of adultery.
Douglass goes on to make it clear that his experience of enslavement showed him that religious people were the worst enslavers.
I assert most unhesitatingly, that the religion of the south is a mere covering for the most horrid crimes, - a justifier of the most appalling barbarity, - a sanctifier of the most hateful frauds, - and a dark shelter under, which the darkest, foulest, grossest, and most infernal deeds of slaveholders find the strongest protection. Were I to be again reduced to the chains of slavery, next to that enslavement, I should regard the being the slave of a religious master the greatest calamity that could befall me. For of all slaveholders with whom I have ever met, religious slaveholders are the worst. I have ever found them the meanest and basest, the most cruel and cowardly, of all others.
Unfortunately, I have found this to be true as well. The most religious of my acquaintance have tended - on average - to be the worst. The “pillars of the church” keep turning out to be the most racist, xenophobic, and contemptuous of the poor.
Douglass ends the book with an Appendix in which he addresses his harsh words about religion. He explains that he is not an opponent of religion - in fact, he himself was a Christian! But the fake-ass “christianity” of the south was a very different thing, not christ-following at all, but an opiate to dull the consciences of those who wished to traffic in human bondage.
What I have said respecting and against religion, I mean strictly to apply to the slaveholding religion of this land, and with no possible reference to Christianity proper; for, between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference - so wide, that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked. To be the friend of the one, is of necessity to be the enemy of the other. I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity. I look upon it as the climax of all misnomers, the boldest of all frauds, and the grossest of all libels. Never was there a clearer case of "stealing the livery of the court of heaven to serve the devil in."
Additionally, he points out that “revivals of religion and revivals in the slave-trade go hand in hand together.” History has shown this to be true. The so-called “Second Great Awakening” in the 1830s, while it initially had some abolitionists in it, quickly devolved into a war on women (the first abortion and contraception restrictions in the United States) and specifically on Black midwives, who, through use of contraceptives, were slowing the rate of reproduction - a drag on the profits of enslavers who had to breed their way to prosperity after the end of the Transatlantic trade. It also went hand in shitty glove with the push to expand slavery to the Western states, the Fugitive Slave Act, and the Dred Scot decision.
We see this again today: the rise of the Religious Right was always about racism, and the culture wars that are tearing our country apart are driven by the same desire for power and dominance over others.
MAGA “Christianity” is just more of the same. The same hatred of immigrants, of black people, of “uppity” women, of LGBTQ people. As Abraham Lincoln said, “it is the same old serpent.” It is the same anti-christian religion that drove the Confederacy - it never went away, it just changed names.
I was reminded of this yet again yesterday when I pushed back at praise of the “He Gets Us” Super Bowl ads, which are bankrolled by some of the most hateful and nasty fundamentalists in our country.
It was easily predictable that the religious people in that discussion would dismiss the funders because “the message is good.” Although I agree with Dave Barnhart that the message of the ad itself is problematic because of who gets to “be Jesus.”
But also all too predictable is the guy who insisted that the “real” purveyors of hate in our country were…..wait for it…..the Black Lives Matter movement, Critical Race Theory, and Antifa.
Excuse me while I die laughing.
So yeah, people really puzzled at the backlash, because there are none so blind as those who refuse to see.
Douglass nailed it: MAGA “christianity” just like Southern slaveholding “christianity” is anything but Christian. It is anti-Christ. It is anti-Christianity. It is hate and supremacy dressing itself in the “livery of heaven” to serve the Devil.
The election of Trump due primarily to white Evangelical voters was my moment of moral clarity - when I saw in my own time what Douglass saw in his. I realized that the religion I was participating in had no real interest in Christ-following. Indeed, it wasn’t so much a religion as a political movement - and a nasty, hateful, racist, xenophobic, misogynist, and anti-LGBTQ one at that.
My family left organized religion seven years ago because of this, and we have not gone back. Likely, we never will. At the time, I warned that this was going to cause problems for the reputation of Christianity, and I was very much right.
In fact, the fact that there is this need to spend $14.5 MILLION dollars on a PR ad is a pretty good demonstration of this new reality. The mask is off. The hate is unmistakable. And people like me are left wondering how so many religious people could have so little fear of God as to think that there will not be consequences for their embrace of evil.
Douglass’ story of his life is inspiring, horrifying, informative, but above all, it is the story of a man, made in God’s image, who devoted his life to fighting the dehumanization of white supremacy. May we all do the same.
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