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Tim Madigan
Frederick Douglass and Ireland:
The Irish Influence on America’s
Greatest Abolitionist and its
Continuing Relevance.
In 1845 Frederick Douglass (1818-1895),
an escaped slave who had recently penned
his autobiography and feared being
recaptured and sent back into slavery,
was invited by leaders of the worldwide
abolitionist movement to come to Ireland,
Scotland and England to lecture. He spent
nearly a year in Ireland, visiting such cities
as Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Waterford, and Belfast. While there, he befriended Daniel
O’Connell, the political leader and orator famed for winning Catholic civil rights in
the United Kingdom. During his time in Ireland, Douglass came to feel for the first
time that he was truly accepted as a human being, and he was inspired to devote the
remainder of his long life to the cause of human emancipation and the abolition of
slavery.
The purpose of this conference was to encourage the public to understand the
importance which Douglass’s time in Ireland had on his development as a human
rights advocate, and to examine through discussions with leading Douglass experts
what lessons can be learned from this, and how to apply these findings to present-day
civil rights issues. St. John Fisher College’s Lavery Library has extensive holdings of
original copies of Douglass’s “North Star” and other abolitionist newspapers which he
published while a resident of Rochester, which have now been digitized. Participants
were able to access these files for the first time. They also learned how Douglass
helped alert the world about the Great Hunger, the massive famine which began
coincidentally during the time of his visit to Ireland, and which is commemorated by a
monument on the St. John Fisher College campus.
Presenters discussed Douglass’s connections to the Women’s Suffrage Movement, his
work in the cause of preserving the Union and abolishing slavery during the American
Civil War, and the horrors of the New York City Draft Riots of 1863 as well as the
relevance this has to relations between the African-American and Irish-American
3
communities then and now. In addition, students from the Frederick Douglass Club
of Rochester City School #12 (located on the site of Douglass’s Rochester home)
performed excerpts from Douglass’s speeches about his time in Ireland, as well as
an original play. The event closed with a showing of the documentary “Frederick
Douglass and the White Negro” which was made for Irish Television in 2008.
Markers have recently been erected commemorating Douglass’s visits to Cork and
Rochester’s sister city of Waterford, and a mural honoring Douglass may be found in
Belfast, Northern Ireland. Understanding the significance of Douglass’s experiences in
Ireland will continue to be an ongoing project of the Irish Studies Program at St. John
Fisher College.
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Rick DeJesús-Rueff
First, I want to extend sincere and deep
thanks to Dr. Tim Madigan for his efforts
to make this day possible. He has brought
to light an interesting and not-well-known
period in the life of Frederick Douglass
and has made it an opportunity for all of
us to learn more about one of the greatest
citizens and leaders in our nation’s history.
And I think it is a wonderful coincidence
that we celebrate the leadership of Frederick
Douglass on the actual birthday of George
Washington, whose leadership helped earn
our nation its first birth of freedom. We
know from another president born during
the month of February that our nation has a
new birth of freedom some four score and seven years later.
I am also a bit humbled to be invited to offer some thoughts about Douglass. Having
read the first two of Douglass’s autobiographies, I do not pretend to be a Douglass
scholar. I look forward to learning more about him today.
“Agitate, agitate, agitate!” Those words are attributed to Frederick Douglass when
he was asked, shortly before his death in 1895, by a younger person what should be
done to help move the United States forward. The wisdom he gained from his years of
experience advocating for the abolition of slavery clearly comes through in this advice.
It is also advice that is consistent with what he understood to be necessary in order
to challenge and end injustice, as Douglass noted much earlier in his life that “power
yields nothing without a demand.”
We are all familiar with the general outline of Douglass’s life – born a slave in
Maryland, escaped to freedom, became an integral member of and leader within the
abolitionist movement; he collaborated with the women who, at Seneca Falls, began
a process to secure their own full inclusion in our political system; and ultimately he
became known as one of the great thinkers and orators on issues related to human
freedom during the 19th century.
As I think about Frederick Douglass and the work I do today to encourage leadership
and self-development among current students at Fisher and beyond, I note that it was
learning to read that inspired his self-development and leadership. But, even more
than that, Douglass told us that literacy was his “pathway from slavery to freedom.”
Though perhaps they would not be considered in the same category as Douglass, two
other African-Americans whose life stories I am familiar with echo the importance
5
of reading as a means of obtaining freedom. Both Malcolm X and the boxer Rubin
“Hurricane” Carter spent years in prison where they discovered the power of reading
to liberate them even while they were physically imprisoned. Reading matters because
it provides an opportunity for the reader to gain knowledge, about self as well as the
surrounding world.
We often hear the cliché that “knowledge is power.”However Douglass tells us
that even more than power, knowledge is freedom. In his time, knowledge and its
accompanying freedom was often best gained through reading. Today, no different
than during the 19th century, I know of no more important task than that of educating
each generation, helping each generation to gain the knowledge that empowers and
frees people to develop their full human potential. Douglass’s life gives powerful
testimony to that possibility.
Making full use of his knowledge and literacy, Douglass wrote, edited and published
his own newspaper. He stated clearly that one of his objectives in publishing his
newspaper was to demonstrate to the public at large the ability of a Black person to
gain and utilize the same intellectual powers as white persons, and to “remove the
prejudice which depreciated and depressed them [the Black persons]; to prove them
worthy of higher consideration; to disprove their alleged inferiority and demonstrate
their capacity for a more exalted civilization than slavery and prejudice has assigned to
them.”
So it is fitting that we gather to learn more about Frederick Douglass at St. John Fisher
College, which to borrow from Douglass, is an institution dedicated to providing
its students with the opportunity to demonstrate their “capacity for a more exalted
civilization.” Clearly, Douglass understood that learning is vital to achieve true
freedom.
It is equally fitting that we will have students from School #12 who will share with us
what they have learned of Douglass’s speeches, demonstrating their own “capacity for
a more exalted civilization.”
But I think it also important to keep in mind that Douglass did not just value
freedom itself, but he valued it for what it enabled him to do: champion what today
we call human rights and brotherhood. Douglass stated forthrightly in his second
autobiography, “I took my stand on the high ground of human brotherhood…”
So, when at the end of his life he advised the young man to agitate, he was not calling
on him to agitate just for the sake of creating a stir or tumult, he was calling for
greater efforts to recognize and promote the fundamental ideals of human rights and
brotherhood. That is what he dedicated his life’s work to, and that is what I believe
he invites each of us to do as well. I hope that you will accept his invitation to agitate,
agitate, agitate!
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Yantee Slobert
Good morning, everyone.
Welcome to the Frederick Douglass in
Ireland Conference.
When people think about Black History
Month, names like the Rev. Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X often come
to mind. However, it is rare that people
mention anything about Frederick Douglass.
Douglass was born a slave and refused
to remain so. He was born a slave and
persistently fought for his freedom. He was
born a slave and became an entrepreneur. He was born a slave and became a great
leader of the abolitionist movement. He was born a slave and became a man that
debated with the President of United States of America to free the slaves.
Frederick Douglass not only refused to remain a slave but decided to help others with
their struggles. He was a wonderful person who thought beyond his own people and
focused on women’s rights as well as immigration. He understood that knowledge
was the key to his freedom and it was his responsibility to help his fellow humankind
regardless of gender or ethnicity. Frederick Douglass’s life proved that everyone has the power to decide what heights
they will reach in life and not allow their circumstances to dictate their fate. If he had
only been a “good slave” and adjusted to the system that he was born into we would
not be celebrating this man’s life.
I am very pleased that we are here to gain further understanding about the life of
Frederick Douglass and all that he did for others. I am also eager to hear what our
experts have to share with us today. Thank you.
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Ann Coughlan
Frederick Douglass and Ireland, 1845:
Moments of Contact, Moments of
Departure.
Frederick Douglass intersects beautifully
with Irish Studies, because he requires an
interdisciplinary setting and he compels us
to look at the multi-layered and complex
workings of discourse: political, social and
literary. I have often noted that Douglass’s
presence in Ireland has deepened my
understanding both of Douglass and of
nineteenth-century Ireland, from a local
and an international perspective. My paper
for the Irish Studies Conference at St John Fisher College considered two separate
aspects of Douglass’s 1845 trip to Ireland: the first looked at his perceptions of Irish
mendicancy and the second examined his brief stop in Waterford City.
Douglass spoke of Irish poverty in two letters he addressed to William Lloyd Garrison,
editor of the Liberator: the first, from Belfast, dated 1 January 1846 and the second
from Montrose, Scotland, on 26 February 1846. From Belfast, he described his
exhilarating time in Ireland, and here he writes some of his most quoted lines: “I can
truly say, I have spent some of the happiest moments of my life since landing in this
country. I seem to have undergone a transformation. I live a new life.” Just before
those beautiful words he informed us: “I have met with much in the character and
condition of the people to approve, and much to condemn—much that has thrilled me
with pleasure—and very much that has filled me with pain.”
In Dublin, Douglass walked amongst and observed the beggars. There were many
bodies, in an array of conditions, all without health and all destitute. Women
denied the dignities of humanity, seemed to exist outside their nature and society’s
obligations to them: “barefooted and bareheaded, and only covered by rags which
seemed to be held together by the very dirt and filth with which they were covered.”
And of course, most shocking of all, were the children, sleeping rough on the streets,
abandoned and hungry, “seated upon cold stone steps, or in corners, leaning against
brick walls, fast asleep...” These reflections and his writing show his concern for the
humanity denied to a particular group and the tension between the beggars and the
comfortable classes.
Douglass’s Waterford stop shows us some of the difficulties in negotiating the political
discourses of a troubled country. His presence, brief as it was, threw into sharp relief
the workings of a society whose dominant political and religious groups were locked
8
in a centuries old battle.
This unfolds in the pages of the local newspapers: the establishment Waterford Mail,
and the nationalist and largely Catholic Waterford Chronicle. The Waterford Mail
flagged Douglass’s visit by printing an exact transcript of his final lecture in Dublin
and encouraged its readers to attend the Waterford because “The cause he so ably
advocates deserves the support of every friend of humanity – of every Christian no
matter of what denomination.”
Meanwhile, the Waterford Chronicle followed its own agenda. A very brief and
caustic comment in the Waterford Chronicle, under the title “Frederick Douglass, The
American,” opened with “There was somebody in the Mail rhyming about the poor
reception the ‘Slave’ got in this city, and blaming the citizens for not cheering him
on.” It is followed by a clipped “but the fact is, nobody heard of him.” The concluding
comments are the most telling as they point to the fractures that were implicit in
Irish society. In the Waterford context, they are especially pertinent, given the move
towards local political reform, and the keen interest in Catholic affairs amongst the
city’s population. “If he had given intimation of his coming at the Chronicle office, we
should have made the city hear of him.”
While, the Mail’s anti-slavery arguments may have been laudable, they were motivated
by a desire to bolster their position as a moral beacon for the Waterford people. The
Chronicle represented a different ideological viewpoint and refuses to be patronised by
the Mail. Douglass’s visit, imposed into an Irish context, clearly shows the risks facing
any intrepid visitor.
Ann Coughlan at the Douglass grave site in Rochester, NY.
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Lee M. Jenkins
Frederick Douglass in Cork
His sojourn in Ireland in 1845-6 was
crucial to Frederick Douglass’s personal,
professional, and political development. The
warmth of the reception he encountered
there, the lack of prejudice, and the
opportunity to hone his skills as a public
speaker increased Douglass’s selfconfidence and arguably paved the way
for his break, shortly after his return to the
United States, with those white American
abolitionists who would not grant him
the full measure of the autonomy he had
been able to exercise in Ireland. Although
he had made his literal and physical escape from slavery in 1838, it was in 1845, in
Ireland, that Douglass seems fully to have experienced his freedom: “I seem to have
undergone a transformation. I live a new life,” Douglass wrote, “I breathe, and lo! the
chattel becomes a man.”
Cork was a significant location on Frederick Douglass’s Irish itinerary. Arriving in Cork
City on 12 October 1845, Douglass remained there for almost a month. Douglass
certainly received a warm welcome in the southern capital.
As a port city, Cork had long played an important part in the Atlantic trade, and
indirectly in the slave trade, too, provisioning the slave colonies of the British West
Indies as well as exporting butter throughout the British Empire. These commercial
contacts had fostered a keen interest in the city in the issue of slavery; indeed,
the Cork Anti-Slavery Society had been formed in 1826 expressly to lobby for the
abolition of West Indian slavery. Following emancipation there in the 1830s, the
Society turned its attention to domestic slavery within the United States, and in
1841 had welcomed the free black American, Charles Lenox Remond, who returned
to America with the “Irish Address,” an appeal to Irish Americans to support the
anti-slavery movement which was signed by some 60,000 Irish men and women,
among them Daniel O’Connell and the Apostle of Temperance, the Cork-based priest
Father Theobald Mathew. Cork’s role as a hub of anti-slavery activity was greatly
enhanced by Douglass’s visit. For example, Douglass delivered a speech to a packed
and enthusiastic audience of working-class, Catholic Corkonians in the city’s Court
House, in which, to the delight of his listeners, he repeatedly invoked the name of
Daniel O’Connell. But in the lecture he gave in the Wesleyan Chapel, then situated
on St. Patrick Street in the city centre, Douglass, diplomatically, did not mention
O’Connell. Like the city’s anti-slavery societies, the temperance movement with which
these were closely allied brought Cork people together across the sectarian divide.
10
Douglass took the pledge from the Apostle of Temperance himself, Father Mathew, at
the Temperance Institute on Academy Street, where he gave an address on the subject
of “Intemperance and Slavery.”
For the duration of his protracted sojourn in the city, Douglass was the guest in Brown
Street of Thomas Jennings, a prominent Unitarian and another temperance activist.
Some 250 copies of the first Irish edition of his Narrative, published by the Quaker
printer Richard Webb, had been sold in Cork by the time Douglass left the city. The
numerous articles related to Douglass in the Cork Examiner, Southern Reporter and
Cork Constitution newspapers attest to his popularity and high profile.
When Douglass left Cork in November, the Cork Examiner printed a special
supplement to mark the occasion. The supplement reprints the fulsome “Address to
Frederick Douglass from Anti-Slavery Societies of Cork”, which had been delivered
during a farewell breakfast for Douglass, held in what is now the Imperial Hotel on
the South Mall. The Frederick Douglass project which is presently being developed in
University College Cork recreated this breakfast in the fall of 2012: at this event, the
Secretary of State for Maryland, John McDonough, unveiled a plaque, the work of
Cork sculptor Matthew Thompson, in the hotel lobby to commemorate Douglass’s visit
to Cork.
For a detailed account of Douglass’s visit to Cork, see Lee M. Jenkins, “Beyond the
Pale: Frederick Douglass in Cork”. Irish Review 24 (1999): 80-95
Photograph of Plaque Commemoration, September 1, 2012.
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Patricia J. Ferreira
“The Inappropriateness of Names
to Signify Things”:
In the midst of the Civil War draft riots
during the summer of 1863, Frederick
Douglass’s son, Charles, wrote to his
father about a fight he had with an Irish
man on the streets of New York City. He
explained how the Irish man overheard him
praise General Meade and was insulted
that General McClellan, of obvious Celtic
ancestry, was not accorded the same
tribute, referring to Charles as a “black
nigger.” As one can appreciate, the slur
incited Charles’s fury whereby he took
off his coat and “went at” his detractor. A crowd of more Irish gathered and jeered
when a policeman stepped in and “marched” the instigator away. Still rankled over
the confrontation, Charles told his father that he could have handled further hostility
because he had his pistol “well loaded” and he felt as though he could “whip a dozen
Irish.” In fact, wrote Charles, “I have got my mind made to shoot the first Irishman
that strikes me.”
Charles’s letter provides a visceral, on the ground, glimpse of the long acknowledged
acrimony between African Americans and the newly arrived Irish immigrants of the
nineteenth-century, made all the more noteworthy because it is written by the son of
“America’s greatest abolitionist.” The larger, well-documented conflict that the young
Douglass was caught up within on that July day arose from Irish insecurities over their
ability to succeed in the New World, their headway threatened if the Union succeeded
and the nation’s slave labor was transformed into a legitimate work force. The Irish,
as a result, resented conscription into a war that they viewed as not serving their own
interests.
In turn, African Americans begrudged that the Irish en masse did not take the moral
and ethical high ground with regard to slavery. Blacks adopted dominant white,
Protestant outlooks, fueled by the Irish allegiance to Catholicism, and projected the
new emigrants as less than human.
Charles Douglass’s account is exemplary because it certainly articulates the pervading
rancor of the day. Frederick Douglass, like his contemporaries, also wrote about
the Irish during this period of American letters. In the newly founded A.M.E. Church
Review, a quarterly devoted to intellectual work on a broad spectrum of topics,
he contributed a piece in 1886, titled “Thoughts and Recollections of a Tour in
Ireland.” Unlike his peers, however, Douglass did not use the occasion to conjure
12
up the prevailing derogatory characterizations of the Irish. Instead, as he had done
in previous venues, he used the opportunity to remind his audience that he had, in
fact, been to Ireland and, as a result, had Irish associations and a range of first-hand
experiences that sharply contrasted with the transgressions of the newly immigrated
Irish Americans. “However harsh and oppressive the sons of Erin may feel and act
toward the oppressed classes when they take up their abode in this country,” wrote
Douglass, “I am bound to say that I found among them in their own country a warm
welcome and safe asylum” (139).
Importantly, it was during his stay in Ireland in 1845 that Douglass first felt
empowered to express concern over a wide range of issues in addition to the
injustices of slavery. By the time Douglass wrote exclusively about his journey in
Ireland, the war was over and the slaves freed, yet class and cultural distinctions
prevailed and with them a refusal by Irish Americans to engage in truly furthering the
American democratic agenda. Douglass, now an internationally respected statesmen,
recounted his time in Ireland as a means to demonstrate that the Irish need look no
further than their origins to find alternatives to their repressive stranglehold on the
American landscape. “There is an inappropriateness of names as signifying things,”
wrote Douglass and, in so doing, he demonstrated a refusal to participate in logic that
cast humanity, including the Irish, in static confines. When he went to Ireland he had
seen otherwise.
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Carolyn Vacca
Douglass and Rochester
“I do not go back to America to sit still,
remain quiet, and enjoy ease and comfort...
I glory in the conflict, that I may hereafter
exult in the victory. I know that victory is
certain. I go, turning my back upon the
ease, comfort, and respectability which I
might maintain even here...Still, I will go
back, for the sake of my brethren. I go
to suffer with them; to toil with them; to
endure insult with them; to undergo outrage
with them; to lift up my voice in their behalf;
to speak and write in their vindication; and
struggle in their ranks for the emancipation
which shall yet be achieved.” March 30, 1847
These words resonate deeply of the activist and statesman that Douglass became over
a lifetime of continued intellectual exploration and growth. The Frederick Douglass
who came to Rochester was the Douglass who had lived life as a slave, a runaway,
and a laborer in New England. Already a speaker and author of note, Douglass spent
two years in Ireland, Scotland, and England, exploring the meaning of abolition and
his own identity. During these years, we see Douglass’s portraits shift from the class
of New Englander to a man of substance and standing, unidentifiable with region.
The changes were not just physical or of style and dress. Douglass the free man was
emerging and evolving.
He had been in Rochester in 1842, at which point he was still closely allied with
the principles and tactics of the Garrisonians. He built close ties with the strong
anti-slavery community that had been activated by years of revival fervor, Quaker
beliefs, and fractured New York politics. His break with Garrison grew out of his
time overseas, a time where he experienced freedom in ways unimaginable to the
vulnerable runaway slave. His formulation of a new constitutional fervor and his own
embodiment of all that abolition stood for, begun while overseas, progressed along
with the life he created in Rochester, a life that included his multiple roles as a free
man—businessman, entrepreneur, orator, writer, and activist, and most overlooked,
husband, father, and friend.
As remarkable as his earlier life was, Douglass would not have become the
independent thinker who actualized his visions without his move to and sustained
residence in Rochester, N.Y. It was here in Rochester that Douglass, the remarkable
runaway who brought the reality of slavery into New England meeting halls became a
man with a respected profession, a man who professed a more highly reasoned and
14
articulated cause, and a patriarch whose family members moved though all levels
of society with acceptance. A look at his life in Rochester reveals these three tightly
woven strands of his life. nAlthough Rochester did have corners of virulent racial
prejudice, the more prevalent openness within this bustling city of 30,000 provided
Douglass the safest environment, for its times, in which to move forward on all that
his past had taught him.
In essence and practice, his family functioned much the same as any other, even white
families, did and regularly interacted with them. Like many other fathers, Douglass,
seen here as the man of substance he had become, fought for the best education
for his children, worked to maintain and enhance his property, continued real estate
investments, and interacted socially with many of the city’s established citizens.
While not without pockets of hostility, the local community in general recognized
the Douglass family as one of them. His son Charles Remond played on one of the
earliest professional baseball teams here, one that was integrated. And when the
youngest of the Douglass children, his beloved Annie, died just shy of her eleventh
birthday, she was buried in Samuel Porter’s plot, with a white family, until Douglass
returned from Glasgow. The family plot he purchased overlooks Mt. Hope Avenue and
is not part of a segregated section of the cemetery.
Many of the Douglass letters that survive were treasured and preserved by the
Rochester community that valued his words and friendship. Douglass himself said,
“I shall always feel more at home there [Rochester] than anywhere else in the
country.”
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Melissa Jadlos
Lavery Library Special Collections is
fortunate to own over 300 issues of AntiSlavery and Abolitionist newspapers. 147
of these were edited by Frederick Douglass
when he lived in Rochester from 18471872. The issue from February 22, 1850 is
extremely rare due to the intricate woodcut
masthead depicting a slave following the
North Star.
In 2012, the Library received a Regional
Automation Grant from New York State to
digitize our collection so that the images
would be available to everyone. Not only
were the issues digitized, they have been indexed and are now searchable.
The images are being uploaded to the New York Heritage website http://nyheritage.
org. They may be easily found by browsing the collection “Anti-Slavery and
Abolitionist Newspapers at Lavery Library.”
The selections on the back are taken from a single issue of
the Frederick Douglass’ Paper. Vol IV. No 37 Sept 4, 1851.
The Lavery Library at St. John Fisher College is home to many
original issues of Douglass’s various newspapers. Many of these
editions have been digitized and are available for viewing at:
http://nyheritage.nnyln.net/cdm/search/collection/p15109coll7.
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David Baronov
The New York City Draft Riots of July
1863 and the Role of the Irish
Race and immigration often signal a caustic
combination, as the New York City Draft
Riots attest to. While the Irish migration
to the New York City grew in the mid 19th
century, this was matched by a growing
free African American population. Upon
arrival, the Irish competed first with other
ethnic whites, entering a race-based division
of labor. In this competition, the Irish
languished toward the bottom. However,
African Americans always remained just
beneath the bottom-most rung of any white ethnic ladder. Consequently, among all
ethnic whites, the Irish more than anyone else found themselves competing with
African Americans for jobs, housing, and social prestige. On the topic of slavery itself,
much of the Irish community was divided. Some were vociferous voices in defense of
abolition and others were active advocates of the peculiar institution. When the Union
instituted a draft for the Civil War in 1863, this then created a singular opportunity
for conflict. The Irish objected to being forced to fight for the freedom of African
Americans and they also saw freed slaves as further competition for jobs. Thus, when
the riots broke out, the Irish were prominent among the participants.
The popular press captured a large number of instances in which the Irish played
leading roles in instigating conflict and harassing and murdering African Americans.
Notably, the press paid particular attention to the national origins of rioters. This
fit a general concern for how well immigrants more broadly were “fitting in” to US
society. However, Catholic immigrants posed particular worries. In addition, it was
the integration of the lower class Irish women as members of the servant class that
provided a good deal of intrigue.
Archbishop Hughes was a central figure within the NYC Irish community in the 1860s
and he came to play a pivotal role in the midst of the Draft Riots. City officials had
called upon the Archbishop to calm the Irish rioters and initially he delayed and put off
taking action. Finally, after the second day of rioting, Archbishop Hughes gave a large
public speech to address his Irish compatriots.
There are several fascinating elements to this speech that well capture the general
immigrant Irish sentiment regarding African Americans and race relations more
generally in the US in the mid-20th century. The Archbishop clearly views the Irish
as above all an immigrant group with strong ties to the home country and with
17
weak historical ties to the US. He begins by identifying with their plight as a fellow
Irishman, explaining that he will never abandon them. Class, gender, and nationalism
are effectively wielded as weapons by the Archbishop throughout his speech. At the
same time, Hughes’ strong emphasis on their immigrant status makes the Irish less
culpable for historical slavery and for racial discrimination more generally. Hence,
Hughes refuses to enter into the underlying issues stoking the riots themselves. At
every turn, he explains that the cause of the riots is not his concern and not especially
of interest to him. Rather, it is the role of the Irish in the violence that concerns him.
He is constantly referencing the evils suffered by the Irish at the hands of her English
colonial masters. Thus, in one move Hughes absolves the Irish from any guilt in
historical racism in the US and in a second brilliant stroke he casts the Irish as longsuffering victims. Hence, there is no justification for violence because the US affords
alternative forms of political redress and the Irish are inherently the victims of, not
the causes of, violence. This is high politics indeed. The Archbishop enters an arena
froth with anger and racist vitriol and he is able to reframe the entire matter. African
Americans are not even relevant to why he has convened the Irish for this speech.
Instead, it is the Irish who are victims and it is the Irish—if anyone—who are justified
in their claims of grievances. The genius of the Archbishop ultimately was his ability
to condemn certain acts of violence, while he implicitly sanctioned their racist hatred.
But then again, for any irrational hatreds, it is the English above all who are to blame.
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Leigh Fought
“Dirty, Sexy, Abolition: The Julia
Griffiths-Frederick Douglass Scandal”
In 1849, the English abolitionists Julia
Griffiths and her sister Eliza visited Douglass
in New York, and Julia stayed on to work at
his paper, boarding in the Douglass home.
Unconventional, talkative, and adamantly
protective of Douglass, she ruffled the
feathers of the Garrisonians, who used
her intimacy with Douglass to attack any
developing ideology that diverged from
his. The gossip ultimately led to her return
to England, where she continued to work
as a fundraiser and correspondent for Douglass, and the two remained lifelong
friends. Historians have studied this incident most deeply by focusing on Douglass’s
ideological development, addressing the sexual innuendo and its impact on the
Douglass family, and passing Griffiths through the narrative as an assistant, without
integrating these pieces of the story with another.
In reconsidering this narrative, however, three points emerge. First, Julia Griffiths was
not a star-struck devotee of Douglass, but a woman with experience in publishing
and fund-raising. The daughter of a financially plagued stationer (a combination of
paper salesman and job printer), she learned bookkeeping and the printing business,
which placed her in contact with several prominent people in British publishing.
She parlayed these contacts into a gift of books and funds to help Douglass as he
embarked upon his newspaper venture when he returned to America. In 1849, when
she and her sister travelled to Rochester to visit Douglass and observe the American
abolitionist movement, she found Douglass facing loss of financial and perhaps
editorial control of his newspaper, woes that were connected to the animosity that
many in the American Anti-Slavery felt toward Douglass as he began the North
Star free from their involvement or oversight. Recognizing her expertise, Douglass
employed her as his business manager and occasional correspondent, and she
organized women in Rochester with the goal of supporting fugitive slaves and the
antislavery press.
Second, Griffiths’s successes in increasing the circulation of Douglass’s paper and
paying off its debts, as well as forming the organization that held anti-slavery fairs,
combined with the symbolic importance of the North Star being owned and edited
by a former slave and international abolitionist celebrity, made Douglass’s paper
a viable competitor with the New York-based National Anti-Slavery Standard, the
Cleveland-based Anti-Slavery Bugle, and the Boston-based Liberator. Her residence
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in the Douglass home, however, provided fodder for the most salacious speculation.
The acrimonious debate culminated in November 1853 with William Lloyd Garrison’s
suggestion of impropriety in the friendship between Douglass and Griffiths. In
response, both Frederick and Anna stepped forward to defend their family from the
intrusion; and letters from journalist Jane Swisshelm and author Harriet Beecher
Stowe forced Garrison to retract his statement.
Yet, the rumors did not subside, and even the Douglass’s friends commented to
them upon the propriety of Frederick’s association with Griffiths. Douglass’s public
appearances with Griffiths as her equal and escort, as well as her employment in his
office and forthright personality drew unwanted attention. Street-roughs attacked
them in New York City, printers published pornographic woodcuts in Boston, and
riverboat waiters refused them seating in dining rooms. Douglass and Griffiths were
fully aware of their provocative friendship and saw the reaction as a product of racism,
regardless of its source. Indeed, shortly after Griffiths’s arrival in the U.S., before she
became associated with Douglass’s success, his allies characterized their continued
appearances in public together in the face of violence as anti-slavery “labor.” Their
friendship, then, was a political act just as much as a business or intellectual
relationship. This politicization of their friendship, however, proved at odds with
Douglass’s other use of his personal life as activism as he and Anna strove to raise a
respectable family in the face of popular assumptions disparaging the ability of African
Americans to form enduring emotional ties.
Reevaluation of Julia Griffiths’s role in Douglass’s life not only recovers Griffiths’s story
as an individual actor in the abolitionist movement, but also underscores competition
within the abolitionist movement. This suggests that Douglass’s relationship with Anna
was complicated not by their presumed intellectual compatibility but the incompatibility
of Douglass’s agendas in upholding a respectable family while also demanding his right
to have a white, female business associate and friend.
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Michelle Garcia-Daniels
The Frederick Douglass Club of Rochester
(FDC) is a grassroots group of students
(5th and 6th graders), alumni (previous
club members), parents, and a handful of
dedicated volunteers. Respect for diversity
and the hunger for knowledge (through
history) are the primary focuses of the
group.
Mission
We are dedicated to building the student’s
confidence, pride, awareness, and respect
for self, community, others. This is achieved
primarily through learning about the
history of both Rochester and the United
States (largely through the eyes of Frederick Douglass), public speaking/dramatic
engagements, volunteer activities, networking with the community, and participation in
historical/interactive field trips.
Mrs. Michelle Garcia-Daniels founded the club in September, 2007. After parking her
car next to a historic marker at School #12, she realized that the school was the actual
home site of Frederick Douglass! Her excitement motivated her to learn more about
Douglass.
Mrs. Daniels reads books (Douglass/Slave Trade/Underground Railroad/Civil War) and
even traveled to Maryland to visit the plantation where Douglass worked as a slave. In
the summer of 2011, she traveled to 16 cities in 10 states in search of the stories of
enslaved and freed people. Every year, the information Mrs. Daniels collects through
self-learning (travel and reading) is transformed into a theatrical play that highlights a
period in Douglass’s life.
Achievements
We are quite excited that for the fifth year in a row, our club members have placed in
local and national speech competitions! Additionally, the students are able to gain a
better understanding of history through annual trips. Each year our diverse group of
students visit a major city to learn about African American History. The students have
visited 4 major cities (District of Columbia, New York City, Philadelphia, and Boston).
The club is currently planning for the 2013 trip for the core group (Washington, DC)
and alumni (Atlanta, Birmingham, Selma, Montgomery, and Memphis) in 2014.
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These are some of events that have kept the club busy:
National Park Service’s Frederick Douglass’s Birthday Celebration
(Frederick Douglass National Historic Site – Speeches)
Rochester Oratorio Society’s Partners in Freedom
(Hochstein School of Music - Re-enactments & Speeches)
RCSD Academic Showcase
(Riverside Convention Center - Speeches)
RCSD Black History Month Celebration
(Board of Education – Speeches)
Monroe County Freedom Trail Commission’s Annual Commemoration
of Colored Troops
(Nazareth College, County Executive Building, and Mt. Hope Cemetery-Re-enactment)
Rochester’s 175th Birthday Celebration
(City Hall - 2009)
Speech
City of Rochester Black Heritage Month Gala
(The Hyatt – 2009/2011)
Speeches
John Brown Birthday Celebration
(John Brown National Historic Site – 2010)
Speech and Presentations
City of Rochester Black Heritage Month Storytelling
(City Hall – 2011)
Speeches
Writers and Book’s Sense of Place Gala
(Rochester Academy of Medicine - 2009)
Speech
Writers and Book’s Edgar Alan Poe-try Slam
(Writers and Books – 2010)
Recitations
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Frederick Douglass Resource Center Oratorical Revue
(Frederick Douglass Resource Center – 2010)
Speeches
MAAFA Ceremony
(Durand Eastman Beach – 2010)
Speeches
Frederick Douglass Lighting Ceremony
(Highland Beach – 2010)
Participants
The Students have also been featured in:
The Democrat and Chronicle Newspaper (multiple times each year)
The Democrat and Chronicle Newspaper (video montage 2010)
WXXI/NPR Radio (5 minute segment)
Channel 8,10, & Fox news (multiple times each year)
RCSDK12.com
Afro.com. (2009)
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David Anderson
THE FIRST CASUALTY
The setting is the railroad station at
Rochester, New York, on an overcast day
in April, 1860. The somber figure entering
the waiting room is confronted by a number
of citizens who had waited in anticipation
of his arrival. He recognizes several, and
is acutely aware of the purpose of this
reception.
The so-called first shot will be fired at Fort
Sumter, April 12, 1861. Yet, some in the
informal assemblage have come to the
conclusion that the American nation is on a certain course to war—civil war. On this
day in 1860, the somber man that is Frederick Douglass has a very personal outlook
on the matter. For him, the youngest of the five children in his house, has become the
first casualty of what will eventually take the lives of more Americans than any war—
or combination of wars—the nation has engaged in. They fear Civil War will be costly,
and, like the wounded heart in Douglass’s chest, linger untold thousands of days into
the future.
During the long return voyage to the United States and to Rochester, Frederick
Douglass has thought about, reviewed and sorrowed over the personal losses that
were still fresh in his mind during his 1840s stay in Ireland and England:
• His beloved grandmother, Betsy Bailey, with whom he spent the first
five, maybe six years of his life;
• Harriet Bailey, the woman who labored to birth him, and whose slave
labors at a regional plantation consumed nearly every one of her waking
hours, and thus deprived her of the mothering role.
During that European sojourn Frederick had been lifted by the opportunity to learn to
be a freeman; the healing had been real. Yet, and yet again, Annie, a beguiling child,
the light of the home that was also an Underground Railroad “safe house,” was quite
something else.
Annie, more scholarly than her older siblings, the lone Douglass child who would
be spared much of the racial slights her sister and brothers encountered. Annie,
who nevertheless would have known Shields Green, the taciturn ex-slave who, after
escaping to Canada, had returned to aid the Douglass family in the hazardous work of
hiding and dispatching fugitives from slavery.
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Little Annie, the last of the five Douglass children, had bonded with the anti-slavery
zealot, John Brown. Brown, early in 1858, had taken room and board in the Douglass
home for the better part of a month. John Brown had shown Annie the drawing
instruments he was using in crafting maps and other illustrations relevant to “the
plan.” It is likely that she, in turn and with pride, told him of her growing fluency in the
German language. Precocious child and hardened warrior, both took delight in each
others company; they sang songs; played games.
Nineteen months later, John Brown had been captured and imprisoned for leading—
executing—the October 16, 1859 raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia.
Douglass, though innocent of direct involvement, nonetheless rightly concluded that
he would be implicated; he again sought refuge in the British Isles.
Annie’s letter to her father, dated December 7, 1859, had opened with a glowing report
of her advancement in school; she had hinted that her next letter might be written in
the German language. Abruptly, near the end of the letter came her somber report of
Brown’s execution. Slightly less than three months later, on March, 1860, life fled from
her body.
It is upon such imagery that the powerful Frederick leaned. Three women: bone of his
bone, flesh of his flesh, and a woman-child. And, there was war.
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Biographies of Presenters
David Anderson is Community Scholar in Residence in the College of Arts and
Sciences and the School of Education at Nazareth College. He chairs the Freedom Trail
Commission, and performs living history re-enactments of Frederick Douglass.
David Baronov is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Sociology at St. John
Fisher College.
Ann Coughlan is a Ph.D. Candidate in English, University College, Cork, Ireland, where
she is completing her dissertation on the topic of Douglass’s time in Ireland.
Richard DeJesus-Rueff is Vice President for Student Affairs and Diversity Initiatives at
St. John Fisher College.
Leigh Fought is Assistant Professor of History at Le Moyne College and has worked
as associate editor on the first volume of Douglass’s correspondence, published by
Yale University Press.
Michelle Garcia-Daniels is the Advisor to the Frederick Douglass Club of Rochester
City School #12. The Club members who presented at the conference were Eric
Daniels, Campbell McDade-Clay, Delia McDade-Clay, Niamh McDade-Clay, and Yasir
Phipps.
Melissa Jadlos is the Director of the St. John Fisher College Lavery Library.
Lee Jenkins is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of English, University College,
Cork.
Timothy Madigan is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at St. John Fisher College
and the Director of its Irish Studies Program.
Yantee Slobert is Director of Multicultural Affairs at St. John Fisher College.
Carolyn S. Vacca is an Associate Professor of History at St. John Fisher College and
also serves as the Monroe County Historian.
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Photographers: Tim Madigan, Kate Torok, and Jack Rosenberry
Special Thanks: St. John Fisher College President Donald Bain, Acting Provost Eileen
Lynd-Balta, Dean of Arts and Sciences David Pate, Outreach and Special Collections
Librarian Michelle Price, and to the New York Council for the Humanities for their
support which made this event possible.
A website with highlights of the Frederick Douglass and Ireland: www.sjfcirishstudies.org/#
Further information on the St. John Fisher College Irish Studies Program: www.sjfc.edu/academics/arts-science/departments/irish/