Black History Month

Was there ever anyone in American letters more righteous than Frederick Douglass? This rock solid integrity and awesome intelligence—speaking to you from the belly of the beast! That a man like this could have ever been a slave—that anyone could be made a slave.... Douglass saw to it that it would come to an end. A great, great writer. "The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave" (1845), should be required reading in every high school in America. It's not, of course; it's barely ever read in our schools. It's just too real and radical. As Douglass said, "A little learning, indeed, may be a dangerous thing, but the want of learning is a calamity to any people." Reading the following passage, I wonder what Douglass would have had to say about Abu Ghraib, about Guantanamo Bay, and Iraq and America's notorious "black sites" (see Rosebud #220, below), about an America that sanctions torture on the grounds that it is necessary to "protect our freedom" and our "way of life.":

"I have had two masters. My first master's name was Anthony. I do not remember his first name. He was generally called Captain Anthony—a title which, I presume, he acquired by sailing a craft on the Chesapeake Bay. He was not considered a rich slaveholder. He owned two or three farms, and about thirty slaves. His farms and slaves were under the care of an overseer. The overseer's name was Plummer. Mr. Plummer was a miserable drunkard, a profane swearer, and a savage monster. He always went armed with a cowskin and a heavy cudgel. I have known him to cut and slash the women's heads so horribly, that even master would be enraged at his cruelty, and would threaten to whip him if he did not mind himself. Master, however, was not a humane slaveholder. It required extraordinary barbarity on the part of an overseer to affect him. He was a cruel man, hardened by a long life of slaveholding. He would at times seem to take great pleasure in whipping a slave. I have often been awakened at the dawn of day by the most heartrending shrieks of an own aunt of mine, whom he used to tie up to a joist, and whip upon her naked back until she was literally covered with blood. No words, no tears, no prayers from his gory victim, seemed to move his iron heart from its bloody purpose. The louder she screamed, the harder he whipped; and where the blood ran fastest, there he whipped longest. He would whip her to make her scream, and whip her to make her hush; and not until overcome by fatigue, would he cease to swing the blood-clotted cowskin. I remember the first time I ever witnessed this horrible exhibition. I was quite a child, but I well remember it. I never shall forget it whilst I remember any thing. It was the first of a long series of such outrages, of which I was doomed to be a witness and a participant. It struck me with awful force. It was the blood-stained gate, the entrance to the hell of slavery, through which I was about to pass. It was a most terrible spectacle. I wish I could commit to paper the feelings with which I beheld it."