PBS premiered Becoming Frederick Douglass, a one-hour biography of the Abolitionist and Civil Rights leader, on October 11. Like the documentary Visions of Harriet Tubman premiered last week, this film uses many short clips of historians like Amy Murrell Taylor, Eric Foner, Edward Baptist, and Adam Goodheart to lay out the remarkable life of this most famous African American of the 19th Century.
The baby who would become Frederick Douglass was born into slavery in 1818 or 1818. As a boy, Frederick Douglass gained an advantage by becoming a servant in his owner’s home in Baltimore. There he traded cakes with local Irish boys in exchange for lessons in reading and books. He also learned about the world beyond the rural slave community he was born in. Whatever the intellectual advantage, moving to Baltimore had the emotional toll of separation from his family.
As his intellect and sense of self developed, Douglass’s white “master” became concerned that he was rebellious and sent him to a slave breaker to destroy his self-created identity. Douglass violently resisted his subjugation. Falling in love with a free Back woman, Douglass freed himself and ran off to New Bedford, Massachusetts. Soon after arriving there he began speaking out against slavery. Every speech provided an opportunity for his white enslaver to recapture him as a runaway.
Professor Farah Jasmine Griffin describes Douglass’s journey to Ireland, Scotland, and England to speak in witness to the horrible reality of slavery. His speeches made him famous in Ireland and Britain, and soon throughout the world. His European admirers would pay his owner to end Douglass’s enslavement.
Although no longer in danger of being kidnapped and re-enslaved, Douglass kept up his relentless attack on slavery. When the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act was passed, Douglass said that Blacks about to be captured had the right to kill their slave catchers. By the 1850s, Douglass understood that slavery could only be ended by war and that Southern whites would fight before they would see enslavement ended.
Eric Foner says that while Lincoln was the first president in United States history to oppose slavery, his reluctance to fight the Civil War to destroy slavery led to criticism from Douglass for his moderation at a time of crisis that required transformative change. After the Emancipation Proclamation and the beginning of the recruitment of Blacks into the Union Army, Lincoln had to listen to Douglass to win the war and end slavery.
After the war, Douglass used Liberty to advocate for Justice, to realize all of the implications of our national ideals.
This is a fine film, although only a few minutes are used to examine the three decades that he lived after the Civil War. His work during Reconstruction, his opposition to the lynching campaigns of former Confederates, and his mentoring of young Black leaders were as important as his work for Abolition. In spite of this short treatment of an incredibly important phase of his life, this film gives essential insights into how Douglass formed himself into a warrior who helped free America from slavery.
Note: While this movie premiered tonight, most PBS stations will show it several times over the next week.
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Why wasn’t David Blight, Douglass’s biographer, prominent as an interpreter of Frederick Douglass? This film was a pallid, wantonly superficial effort to encapsulate a person of Lincoln’s stature.