The Visionary Genius of Frederick Douglass

Guest Speaker: Dr. Richard Bell

Join us for a presentation by Dr. Richard Bell, a professor of history at the University of Maryland, on the many-sided life, family, career and impact on the visionary Frederick Douglas.

Frederick Douglass was a visionary—a prophet who could see a better future that lay just beyond reach. He put his exceptional gifts to use in the service of freedom, driving American slavery into the grave. After the carnage of the Civil War, he played a central role in the re-founding of the American Republic as well and spent decades afterward defending and perfecting it. Explore his life, family, and career, and consider his impact upon our modern struggle to advance the cause of black freedom in the United States.

Douglass, though, is so much more than another great man on a pedestal. He was the slave who dreamed of being a senator. He was the unlettered child with no formal schooling who wrote three autobiographies, becoming one of our greatest literary figures. His life bursts with contradiction and change. He was the dignified, brilliant, and courageous freedom fighter who could sometimes be insecure, vain, and arrogant. He was the outspoken feminist who treated his own long-suffering wife like his servant. He was the fire-breathing insurgent who would eventually become an out-of-touch elder statesman. To understand how the boy born into bondage in 1818 became the Frederick Douglass that we hold in such esteem today, we must understand this man’s visionary genius not as innate, God-given, and infallible, but instead as the imperfectly beautiful product of growth, of change, of self-doubt, and of struggle.

This event is presented in partnership with the Worchester County Library

About Dr. Richard Bell:

Led by Dr. Richard Bell, a professor of history at the University of Maryland, this event explores this many-sided man’s life, family, and career, and assesses his impact upon our modern struggle to advance the cause of black freedom in the United States.

This event will be presented through Crowdcast. Registration is required. 

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