Panel Discussion: Frederick Douglass at 200: The Life Behind the Times

In honor of the 200th Anniversary of the birth of Frederick Douglass & the 20th anniversary of the founding of the Gilder Lehrman Center.

Frederick Douglass is one of the greatest American thinkers, writers, and orators of the nineteenth century. He is forever known in his words and his activism. Join the Gilder Lehrman Center for a discussion of that literary and political legacy, especially through the story of the personal life behind his turbulent times.

Scholars of Frederick Douglass will explore public and private dimensions of his life, including his daughter, three sons, and extended family; his two marriages, one of 44 years with Anna Murray Douglass and the other for 11 years with Helen Pitts Douglass; his relationships with European women, Julia Griffiths and Ottilie Assing; and his personal friendships, some rooted in fierce rivalry and some in enduring support, both in the United States and in England.

The panel will include a reading by Nzadi Keita of a selection of her poems imagining the life of Anna Murray Douglass.

Welcome and introduction: David W. Blight, Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center and Class of 1954 Professor of American History, Yale University

Moderator: Jacqueline Goldsby, Professor and Chair of African American Studies, Professor of English and American Studies, Yale University

Panelists:

·David W. Blight, author of the forthcoming, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of American Freedom (2018)

·Sarah Meer, Fellow of Selwyn College, University of Cambridge, expert on Julia Griffiths and Douglass’s relationships with British antislavery, author of the forthcoming Cousins and Claimants: Transatlantic Notions, 1820-1920

·Leigh Fought, Associate Professor of History at Lemoyne College and author of Women in the World of Frederick Douglass (2017)

·M. Nzadi Keita, Associate Professor of English, Ursinus College and author of Brief Evidence of Heaven: Poems from the Life of Anna Murray Douglass

·Hannah Rose Murray, University of Nottingham, UK, Gilder Lehrman Center fellow; creator of website about Douglass and other African American abolitionists in the British Isles