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Frederick Douglass
Last week
I attended the launch of Christine Kinealy’s authoritative and revealing two volumes
on the life and times of Frederick Douglass,
'Frederick Douglass and Ireland: In his own words.' Douglass was born into slavery two hundred years ago this
year in the United States. He escaped from slavery, wrote about his experiences
and lectured widely, including here in Ireland.
Christine
Kinealy is the Director of Ireland’s Great Hunger Institute at Quinnipiac
University in Connecticut and has had a long association with Ireland writing
on Daniel O’Connell, the Great Hunger and, of course Frederick Douglass.
Quinnipiac’s Múseam An Ghorta Mór – Ireland’s Great hunger Museum, is a
unique collection of art and research and resource materials on that period of
Irish history.
Christine’s
newest book is drawn from over fifty speeches which Douglass gave in Ireland.
They are a reminder of the evil and horror that was and is slavery and of the
work of the anti-slavery movement that was active in Ireland in the 1840’s.
Slavery had been opposed by radical Presbyterian’s in Belfast in the late 18th
century, many of whom became United Irelanders. Efforts to form a slave company
in the city were thwarted and decades later when Douglass lectured in Belfast
one of his most enthusiastic supporters was Mary Anne McCracken, sister of the
executed leader of 1798. When Douglass left Belfast in January 1846 he left
behind a Ladies Anti-Slavery Society one of whose founding members was Mary
Anne McCracken.
Visiting Douglass home: ltoR: Mise, Phil Gutrich LiUNA, Todd Allen and Joseph Smith FoSF.
Slavery
is not the past. It is the present. It is estimated that between 20 and 40
million people across the world are in slavery. Some are women forced into
prostitution, or children working in sweatshops, or men and women forced to
work through fear, and threats. Modern slavery takes different forms. Human
trafficking, debt bondage, child slavery. There are an estimated ten million
child slaves. Think about that – 10 million children living in slavery.
For many
people in Ireland slavery is something that existed decades, even centuries
ago. In the worst years of poverty and landlordism it was endemic on this
island. The English landlord class and its agents
cruelly exploited this situation to maximise their profits. Here is how one English writer Arthur English
– A Tour in Ireland 1780 described conditions at the time:
“A landlord in
Ireland can scarcely invest an order which a servant, labourer or cotter dares
to refuse to execute. Nothing satisfies him but an unlimited submission.
Disrespect or anything tending towards sauciness he may punish with his cane or
his horsewhip with the most perfect security, a poor man would have his bones
broke if he offered to lift a hand in his own defence… Landlords of consequence
have assured me, that many of their cottars would think themselves honoured by
having their wives or daughters sent for to the bed of their master; a mark of
slavery that proves the oppression under which such people must live.”
But later
slavery took on different forms. It took the shape of the Magdalene Laundries,
of mother and baby homes and of the industrial schools.
Today slavery
still exists globally and there is an obligation on all of us to speak out
against it.
The story
of Douglass is a story of connections with Ireland. At the age of 12 he was
encouraged by two Irishmen working in the shipyard where he was a slave
labourer, to escape. He made several efforts and eventually escaped at the age
of 20.
As an
escaped slave Frederick Douglass was still liable to be taken by pro-slaver
supporters and returned to his former Master. He was reluctant to speak
publicly. Eventually however he agreed to speak on the issue and emerged as an
articulate and gifted orator. His
speeches and lectures were very effective in building support for the
anti-slavery movement. In 1845 he published his autobiography, ‘The Narrative of the Life of Frederick
Douglass, An American Slave’. Within a few months he had sold over five
thousand copies but this success increased the possibility of pro-slave elements
capturing him and returning him to slavery.
Douglass
sailed for Britain in August 1845. On his journey he was asked by the Captain
if he would speak to the passengers about his experience. Some pro-slavery
passengers threatened to throw Douglass overboard but an unidentified Irishman
intervened and threatened to do it to them first.
Shortly
after he arrived in Liverpool Douglass sailed to Dublin where on 3 September he
gave his first lecture in Ireland. Over the following months he travelled to
Wexford, Waterford, Cork, Limerick and Belfast. He returned to Belfast another
four times.
Ireland
was in his own word “transformative” for Douglass. In a letter to a friend in
Boston he wrote: “I live a new life. The
warm and generous co-operation extended to me by the friends of my despised
race … and the entire absence of everything that looked like prejudice against
me, on account of the colour of my skin – contrasted so strongly with my long
and bitter experience in the United States, that I look with wonder and
amazement on the transition.”
Douglass
said of his time in Ireland that he had become a man, rather than a chattel. In
the course of his time here he met Daniel O’Connell and others campaigning to
end the Union with Britain. He witnessed the awful conditions endured by Irish
peasants. Consequently, Douglass increasingly saw the issue of slavery not in
isolation but as part of a wider campaign for equality and social justice.
He wrote:
“I see much here to remind me of my former
condition, and I confess I should be ashamed to lift up my voice against
American slavery, but that I know the cause of humanity is one the world over.
He who really and truly feels for the American slave, cannot steel his heart to
the woes of others; and he who thinks himself an abolitionist, yet cannot enter
into the wrongs of others, has yet to find a true foundation for his
anti-slavery.”
In 1848
he was one of the few men to attend the Seneca Falls Convention, the first
women’s rights conference. When a dispute arose over whether they should
campaign for women to have the right to vote Douglass, who was the only African
American participant, successfully argued for its inclusion in the closing
Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions. In a speech in 1867, Douglass said: "Let no man be kept from the ballot box
because of his color. Let no woman be kept from the ballot box because of her
sex".
Douglass’s
close association with Belfast should be a matter of great public pride. It is
a part of our history that needs to be told and retold. It is also a reminder
that the evil of slavery still has to be ended.
Frederick
Douglass and Ireland: In his own words by Christine Kinealy.
This is
an expensive two volume publication so if need be order it from your local
library.
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