***UP FROM SLAVERY-THE LIFE OF
FREDERICK DOUGLASS
BOOK REVIEW
THE LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK
DOUGLASS, FREDERICK DOUGLASS
FEBRUARY IS BLACK HISTORY MONTH
At the start
of the 21st century the international labor movement faces, as it
has for a long time, a crisis of revolutionary leadership. That leadership is
necessary to resolve the contradiction between the outmoded profit-driven
international capitalist productive system and a future production system based
on social solidarity, cooperation and production for social use. In America, at
least, there is also a crisis of leadership of the black liberation struggle,
which is tied into the labor question as well through the key role of blacks in
the labor force. More happily in the 19th century in the struggle
against slavery by the slaves and former slaves for black liberation there was
such a leadership and none more important than the subject of this
autobiography, Frederick Douglass. Even a cursory look at his life puts today
‘clean’ black leadership in the shades.
That
Frederick Douglass was exceptional as a fighter for black freedom, women’s
rights and as a man there is no question. His early life story of struggle for
individual escape from slavery, attempts to educate himself and take an active
political role on the slavery question rightly thrilled audiences here and in
Europe. I, however, believe that he definitely came into his own as a
revolutionary politician when he broke from Garrisonian non-resistant
abolitionism and linked up with more radical elements like John Brown and the
Boston ‘high’ abolitionists like Wendell Phillips and Thomas Wentworth
Higginson. This abolitionist element pointed the way to the necessary fight to
the finish strategy, arms in hand, to end slavery that eventually came to
fruition in the Civil War.
At one time
I personally believed that Douglass should have gone with John Brown to
Harper’s Ferry. He would have provided a better grasp of the political and
military situation there than Brown had and would have been forceful in calling
out the slaves and others in the area to aid the uprising. In no way was my
position on his refusal based on his personal courage of which there was no
question. I now believe that Douglass more than made up for any help he would
have given Brown by his work for an emancipation proclamation and for his calls
for arming blacks in the Civil War to take part in their own emancipation. As
such, it is well known that Douglass was instrumental in calling for the
creation of the famous Massachusetts 54th Regiment, including the
recruitment of two of his sons. Yes, 200,000 black soldiers and sailors under
arms fighting to the death, and under penalty of death by the rebels, for their
freedom is a fitting monument to the man.
Douglass, as
well as every other militant abolitionist worth his or her salt, lined up
politically with the new Republican Party headed by Lincoln and Seward before,
during and shortly after the Civil War. However, the Republican Party ran out
of steam as a progressive force fairly shortly after the war, culminating in
the sell-out Compromise of 1877 which abandoned blacks to their fate in the
South. Douglass, committed to emancipation, education and ‘forty acres and a
mule’ for his fellows stayed with that party far too long. When key elements of
that party lost heart in the black struggle due to their racism and other
factors, moved on to other interests, or accepted the traditional white
leadership of the South he also should have moved on to another progressive
formation. Embryonic workers parties and
other such progressive formations were raising their heads in the 1870’s. I do
not believe that office in the Consular Service in Haiti was worth continuing
to support a party going in the wrong direction. Notwithstanding that point, if
you want to read about the exploits of a ‘big man’ in the history of the struggle
of the oppressed, our history, when it counted this is your stop. Honor the
memory of Frederick Douglass.
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