frederick douglass civil war david w blight

He knew his father was white, but he didn’t know who he was. He never did know who his father was, although he knew he was probably one of his masters, one of his owners. He had to invent an image of his mother to have some idea of what she looked like. With Douglass, I’ve come to believe you have to begin with the fact that he’s an orphan, a true orphan. He’s always going to be the slave who stole his own freedom, mastered the master’s language, and wrote better about it than anyone alive. How did you do that as a biographer, a scholar, a writer?ĭavid Blight (DB): Douglass is going to be a hero whether we say he is or not, because of the Narrative and the way it’s taught.

In such a complete and beautiful portrait, you also make clear the silences in the archives. You write in the book about Douglass’s loneliness and need for affirmation and love, about his infidelities, his despair combined with faith, his outrage and embittered sensibility combined with optimism and forgiveness. It’s also partly an emotional biography, exploring traumas of childhood, enslavement, abandonment, troubled marriage and family life, and struggles with money. Your new biography intertwines Douglass’s public and intellectual life with his personal and domestic life.

Martha Hodes (MH): In describing Frederick Douglass, you have used the word “hero.” Heroes and geniuses are complex people. We recently sat down to talk about Douglass’s monumental life, the voice of the biographer, memory and tragedy, and why history matters right now. Blight has just published the highly anticipated Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom. He writes for the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Slate, and numerous other publications and speaks before a diverse array of audiences all over the world. Starting out as a public high school teacher in his hometown of Flint, Michigan, Blight is now Class of 1954 Professor of American History at Yale University and director of Yale’s Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition. Among his many books are Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (2001), which won eight prizes A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom (2007), based on two previously undiscovered slave narratives and American Oracle: The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era (2011), which explores the war’s centennial through four writers, including James Baldwin. Puzzling out the meaning of the Civil War and its aftermath has been David Blight’s lifelong work.

Frederick douglass civil war david w blight