In what feels like the dwindling hours of this democracy, I’m painfully aware of the erosion of civil rights gains, rise in voter suppression laws, and push to restrict teaching Black history — actions that echo a grim pattern of this country’s resistance to progress.
That last one especially burns as we celebrate Black History Month throughout February, honoring people like Frederick Douglass, abolitionist, adviser to U.S. presidents, and forward-thinker, who was born into slavery on Maryland’s Eastern Shore around February 14, 1818.
Now, more than two centuries later, we still celebrate Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey — his given name — for the luminous, enduring legacy he forged. What are the odds that any one person could escape bondage, buy their own freedom, and be the squeaky wheel that helped get the Emancipation Proclamation across the finish line?
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That’s why I consider Douglass to be the original viral influencer.
Tilting against the cruel, hustle culture of slavery, he made a break for freedom in Baltimore in 1838, borrowing the red shirt, sailor’s hat, and black cravat of a sailor; stuffing a sailor’s protection pass in his pocket in case he had to prove to railroad officials that he wasn’t, ahem, a runaway slave.
His sweetheart and soon-to-be wife, Anna Murray, a free Black woman whom he’d met in town, sold a feather mattress and put it with her savings to buy him a train ticket north. They married in New York and later he continued on to New Bedford, Mass. — a hub for the abolitionist movement. It was there, amid its large free Black community, that he wrote the first of his three autobiographies, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. This after he’d taught himself to read, building on the baby blocks of knowing the alphabet and a few words.
The name Douglass was never more than a gag, intended to throw his “master” off his trail, but as a fugitive slave, he sought to put even more distance between himself and Thomas Auld’s plantation on the Chesapeake Bay’s Eastern Shore, sailing to England, Ireland, and Scotland, where he gave speeches, sold his book, and built a platform.
I marvel at how he tag-teamed with European abolitionists, who crowd-sourced some of the $700 he needed to buy his freedom in 1847. In perhaps his biggest display of badassery, Douglass later circled back to speak with his former enslaver, man to man.
As the story goes, Auld sent a servant to invite the by-then famous statesman to call on him. It would be the first time that a Black man had ever entered the home by the front door as an honored guest, historian Dickson Preston wrote in Young Frederick Douglass. Near the end of their emotional visit, Douglass asked Auld what he thought of Douglass running away four decades earlier. “Frederick,” Auld confided, “I always knew you were too smart to be a slave.” The notion that until we are all free, none of us is free dogged Douglass. I’m inspired by how he did so much with so little, continuing to fight to end slavery for all by pressing pal Abraham Lincoln to get the Emancipation Proclamation handled; promoting women’s suffrage; and running in 1872 to be vice president to Victoria Woodhull’s president — nearly 50 years before women secured the vote. Douglass’s messages went viral through his newspaper, the North Star, named after the celestial map Black folks used to navigate their path to freedom via the Underground Railroad. His media outlet was a beacon for the oppressed. Long before the selfie era, Douglass became the most photographed man of the 19th century. According to the 2015 book Picturing Frederick Douglass, he sat for about 160 portraits, compared to the 126 taken of Lincoln. Douglass used photography as a tool to challenge racist stereotypes at a time when Black representation in white media was limited to laughable caricatures or menacing drawings. He stayed ready for his close-up, donning the luxurious ascots, vests, and overcoats that befit his success. The ubiquitous image of Douglass, proudly rocking a bold afro—a full century before it became a symbol of Black power in the 1970s—remains an iconic visual, and was captured in a 1979 Soul Train commercial. Today, this country that he fought to transform is at a crossroads. As we watch rights and freedoms slowly be chipped away, we’ve got to ask ourselves: What are we doing with the power we have? Are we going to let the forces of regression control the narrative, or are we gonna step up like Douglass and refuse to accept the status quo? As we celebrate this month, we owe it to our past, present, and future to keep pressing for change, and to let Douglass’s remarkable journey remind us that we’re not here to passively watch our story unfold, but to actively shape it into the highest vision for ourselves with the humble tools at our disposal.
#RiseUp #MakeHistory #DouglassVibes
Pamela K. Johnson is a writer and filmmaker who lives in Southern California.