American Badass: Frederick Douglass

Although Frederick Douglass is a common name during black history month, so few people really know his amazing story.

BLUF: He was a BAMF- Bad Ass Mother Fucker.  Seriously.

Douglass wrote three autobiographies in his life.  Each one gives a little more insight into his journey than the previous, and his escape only told by the third, AFTER slaves were freed.  He explicitly says that he isn’t going to delve into those details in case someone else wants to use his method.  You need to read these books, you just do.

When he was a child, Douglass’ mistress started to teach him to read since she saw him as a little boy, when his master found out he was furious.  Here is how Douglass recounts the story:

“‘If you give a nigger an inch, he will take an ell. A nigger should know nothing but to obey his master-to do as he is told to do.  Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world.  Now,’ said he, ‘if you teach that nigger (speaking of myself) how to read, there would be no keeping him.  It would forever unfit him to be a slave.  He would at once become unmanageable, and of no good value to his master.  As to himself, it could do him no good, but a great deal of harm.  It would make him discontented and unhappy.’ These words sank deep into my heart, stirred up sentiments within that lay slumbering, and called into existence an entirely new train of thought.  It was a new and special revelation, explaining dark and mysterious things, with which my youthful understanding had struggled, but struggled in vain.  I now understood what had been to me a most perplexing difficulty-to wit, the white man’s power to enslave the black man.  It was a grand achievement, and I prized it highly.  From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom. […] Though conscious of the difficulty of learning without a teacher, I set out with high hope, and a fixed purpose, at whatever cost of trouble, to learn how to read.The very decided manner with which he spoke, and strove to impress his wife with the evil consequences of giving me instruction, served to convince me that he was deeply sensible of the truths he was uttering. It gave me the best assurance that I might rely with the utmost confidence on the results which, he said, would flow from teaching me to read.  What he most loved, that I most hated. That which to him was a great evil, to be carefully shunned, was to me a great good, to be diligently sought; and the argument which he so warmly urged, against my learning to read, only served to inspire me with a desire and determination to learn.”

Damn!  Knowledge really is power, this was true in the 19th century and remains true in the 21st.

Later, as he grew older and unruly, he was sent to a man made famous for breaking tough slaves.  He had almost won, and as Douglass was beginning to break, something snapped.  He fought back.  He and Mr. Covey fought for nearly two hours, and Douglass walked away the victor.  He decided at that moment that he would never let another white man beat him.

Do you understand what that means?  He decided that he would always fight back, welcoming death into his life as a walking companion always ready to strike.  That takes some serious fucking balls.

Later in life, before earning his freedom, he was working on a ship when an argument ensued with one of the white sailors.  The two begin to fight, and in a flash, Douglass is fighting the entire crew as they try and take him down.  He describes in vivid detail the boot that hit his face knocking him unconscious and leaving a prominent scar on his face for the rest of his life.

He didn’t just have a mean left hook, he was also an intellectual heavyweight.  His amazing writing and speaking skills earned him a meeting with Abraham Lincoln.  Refusing to be starstruck, Douglass told Lincoln exactly what he thought about the constitution and Lincoln’s pandering to slave owners, and eventually was a key player in getting Lincoln to become an abolitionist.

I’ve always regarded Douglass as a personal hero.  He fought evil intellectually, but understood that sometimes we need to sacrifice our body and live out our principles in action. I’ve seen many people talk a big game that they can’t back up.  Douglass feared no man, nor death.  He was a man of principle, and someone we should all be willing to emulate.

Like I said, BAMF.

-LJF