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Frederick Douglass' Name & The Duality of His
Nature
Frederick Douglass was an emancipated slave who passed from one master to another until
he finally found the satisfaction of being his own; he went through almost as many names
as masters. His mother's family name, traceable at least as far back as 1701 (FD, 5) was
Bailey, the name he bore until his flight to freedom in 1838. His father may or may not
have been a white man named Anthony, but Douglass never firmly validated or rejected this
possibility. During transit to New York (where he became a freedman) his name became
Stanley, and upon arrival he changed it again to Johnson. In New Bedford, where there were
too many Johnson's, he found it necessary to change it once more, and his final choice was
Douglass, taken, as suggested to him by a white friend and benefactor, from a story by Sir
Walter Scott (although the character in that story bore only a single 's' in his name).
All throughout, he clung to Frederick, to 'preserve a sense of my identity' (Norton,
1988).
This succession of names is illustrative of the transformation undergone by one
returning from the world of the dead, which in a sense is what the move from oppression to
liberty is. Frederick Douglass not only underwent a transformation but, being intelligent
and endowed with the gift of Voice, he brought back with him a sharp perspective on the
blights of racism and slavery. Dropped into America during the heat of reform as he was,
his appearance on the scene of debate, upon his own self-emancipation, was a valuable
blessing for the abolitionists. In their struggles so far, there had been many skilled
arguers but few who could so convincingly portray the evils of slavery, an act which
seemed to demand little short of firsthand experience, but which also required a clear
understanding of it. Douglass had both, and proved himself an incredibly powerful weapon
for reform. While the identity of his father is uncertain, it is generally accepted that
the man was white, giving Douglass a mixed ancestry. Mirroring this, he was also blessed
with an eye that could bring into focus different perspectives and, just as many
multi-racial children today are able to speak multiple languages with ease, he had the
ability to translate in the most eloquent fashion between the worlds of the black man and
white man. Thus, ironically, the torturous beginning of Douglass' existence was
inadvertently made (by him) into a treasure for 'us' (being mainly white America). The
story of the American Dream, wherein a young man, born into a hostile world, never loses
sight of one goal, is not all that distant in theme from Narrative of The Life of
Frederick Douglass.
The story of the American Dream has been embedded deeply in our (American) culture from
the beginning. Similarly anchored in the American consciousness is the presence of a
'slavery-complex'. Along these lines Douglass' role is a major one, for relatively few
first-hand accounts of slavery as powerful and representative as his exist, in light of
the magnitude of the crime, and few voices have been as far-reaching. More recent heirs of
this 'office' such as Malcolm X have carried the torch further, just as America's racial
sickness still clings to our collective consciousness. Frederick Douglass has been
described as 'bicultural'. In other words, he occupied a middleground shared by blacks and
whites alike. This designation proves to be thematically consistent with his biological
(if we are to take his word for it) as well as psychological characteristics. Dual-natured
in this fashion, he is made accountable for both sides.This can be seen in his gravitation
towards freedom when he was a slave, and manifests itself just as strongly in his vision,
once he was able to look back, of the 'graveyard of the mind' that American slavery was
for him-as it was for the rest of black America.
"They would sometimes sing the most pathetic sentiment in the most rapturous tone,
and the most rapturous sentiment in the most pathetic tone...they would sing, as a
chorus...words which to many would seem unmeaning jargon, but which, nevertheless, were
full of meaning to themselves. I have sometimes thought that the mere hearing of those
songs would do more to impress some minds with the horrible character of slavery, than the
reading of whole volumes of philosophy on the subject could do. I did not, as a slave,
understand the deep meaning of those rude and apparently incoherent songs. I was
within the circle; so that I neither saw nor heard as those without might see or
hear." (Norton, 1944)
With the duality of perspective came also one of language, a fact to which we owe his
writings and abolitionist activism. This is seen in Douglass' reflection on slave-songs
(above). Men such as Malcolm X and Frederick Douglass do not occupy the niche of
translator accidentally; they each earned the title of spokesman because it takes a
certain kind of man to bridge the gap between the two worlds of black and white, or
freeman and slave. This job calls not only for access to the two worlds which he must
inhabit, but also for the ability to pass freely back and forth between them, in body,
mind and spirit; most importantly, such a man must be capable of acting as a human filter
or channel, so that each side can see the other. Becoming such a bridge extracts a
profound price from the individual and leaves scars just as deep as those of slavery
itself. It makes fundamental alterations in the very identity of the host, who is morally
obligated to present his boons to the world.
A man in this position is called upon to balance his experiences of the two realities.
He must embrace the new world he finds himself in and glean as much as he can from it; he
also must continue to carry the weight of his past so that he can interpret it for others,
who must learn from it. So did Douglass learn and master the 'power dialect', or
upper-class English, and use it to show the very same group who invented and hoarded it,
the evil that they and their withholding of language caused. In a world where knowledge is
sat on by the 'have's, language is power, and language was first Frederick Douglass' first
key to freedom, then his armor, and finally his sword. He turned on his oppressors and
raised it against them. But Douglass and his gift of language underwent yet another
transformation, and his words became a healing balm and a fixer of wrongs. From slavery to
freedom, from the South to the North, from a young man of many names to the adult named
Frederick Douglass, in revealing songs of happiness to be ones of woe, and 'singing' those
songs so that all could hear, this gifted man helped America come to terms with slavery as
it really was.
Bibliography
Douglass, Frederick. 'Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave'.
Norton Anthology of American Literature, 4th edition, vol.I.
Sundquist, Eric. 'Introduction to Frederick Douglass: New Literary and Historical
Essays'.
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