David Blight is a professor of history at Yale and the author or editor of a dozen books, including annotated editions of Douglass's first two autobiographies. It illuminates many facets of Douglass's life - his break with leading abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, his complicated personal life, his support for and bitter feud with leaders of the women's suffrage movement and his years as a Republican Party functionary when he took patronage jobs in the government. And he did plenty of both in the 20 years leading up to the Civil War and for decades after, condemning the restoration of white supremacists in the former slave states and the denial of basic rights to black citizens.īlight's new biography of Douglass is on The New York Times list of the 10 best books of the year. Douglass was a passionate writer and powerful orator. Our guest, historian David Blight, says there's a lot more people don't know about Douglass's long and remarkable life, like the fact that he was the most photographed person in the 19th century and probably the most well-traveled public figure of his century. The 19th-century abolitionist Frederick Douglass is probably best known for his compelling autobiographies in which he described his experiences as a slave and his escape to freedom.
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