Portrait of a Free Man by Frederick Douglass; Published by Thornwillow Press

And speaking of being home-bound and probably even more sucked into the social media rat hole, there is a lesson in “social” media usage here that blew me away. Know who the most photographed man in the 19^th century was? Abraham Lincoln? Nope. Frederick Douglass. Amazingly, he recognized and used the new visual medium of photography to his and to black people’s advantage in his lifelong fight against the systemic racism of the United (then dis-united, then re-united) States of America of his lifetime. Would he be scratching his head at our progress today? Yup.

This is the second time I’ve read Douglass’ book, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. The first time was in the Easton Press edition from their series The Books That Changed the World. That was long ago enough that I don’t clearly remember any subtleties as they were overwhelmed by the gross horror of his enslaved experience. In the Thornwillow edition, the book is augmented by a preface and two essays by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., that really flesh out what Douglass was trying to do with his books, his oratory, and especially, his image. And his image is illustrated by a series of photographs from different periods of his freed life. Gates has this to say about Douglass and his savviness around how to “sell” abolition and chip away at racism:

He was a celebrity in every modern sense. Most importantly, he had a genius for controlling his own image. He used this genius for the purpose of liberation. the power of a photograph is in its truthfulness. It is a mirror of what stands before the lens. Douglass knew this, and so stood before the lens a proud and cultivated figure, his suit tailored perfectly, his expression commanding.

— Preface, p.12

And applying that savvy to today, Gates adds:

Knowing that he was the most photographed man of the nineteenth century, we must always ask ourselves, who is the most photographed person today? An image of power is power. and image of freedom is freedom. In Douglass, our country found what it needed in the nineteenth century– a portrait of freedom. Such an image is still needed today.

— Preface, p. 14

Those who pretend we live in a “post-racial” society, if they exist after the last four years, and indeed everyone in the U.S. that need a reminder of how far from that imagined but worthy goal we started should read this book. Maybe again and again. Probably it should be required reading in school curriculum.

But my heart was never completely blind to the injustices and the hypocrisy that Douglass describes in his book. And what tunnel vision I might have had has been chipped away through my reading years by books like these.

carousing night as a young adult, and still visit every time I go “home” to eat Bertha’s Mussels with my friends. So even in the darkest passages, I took subtle pleasure in the landmarks and descriptions of places that are dear to my heart even as I read about the people who populated those places desecrated them with their abhorrent behavior.

Reading made me the person I am today, and as bit of an auto-didact, I often tout the unmatchable benefits of this particular way of acquiring knowledge: having the most agency as to what wells of knowledge you dip into and when, having more wells to choose from than probably any other media or source, and just plain entertaining oneself in one of the simplest ways available. Literacy was and is feared by many in power and was deliberately discouraged among slavers in the U.S. A well-read populace is hard to manage and certainly harder to oppress.  So when a well-meaning and naive (in her husband’s eyes) Mistress taught Douglass to read, that was the end of his submission to being enslaved. He writes:

The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers. I could regard them in no other light than a band of successful robbers, who had left their homes, and gone to Africa, and stolen us from our homes, and in a strange land reduced us to slavery. I loathed them as being the meanest as well as the most wicked of men. As I read and contemplated the subject, behold! that very discontentment which Master Hugh had predicted would follow my learning to read had already come, to torment and sting my soul to unutterable anguish.

–The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, p.61

Another sobering and eye-opening passage has to do with the frequent complicity of the church in slavery throughout history. Douglass pulls no punches with this passage:

I assert most unhesitatingly, that the religion of the south is a mere covering for the most horrid crimes,–a justifier of the most appalling barbarity,–a sanctifier of the most hateful frauds,–and a dark shelter under, which the darkest, foulest, grossest, and most infernal deeds of slaveholders find the strongest protection. Were I to be again reduced to the chains of slavery, next to that enslavement, I should regard being the slave of a religious master the greatest calamity that could befall me. For of all slaveholders with whom I have ever met, religious slaveholders are the worst. I have ever found them the meanest and basest, the most cruel and cowardly, of all others.

–The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, p.104

Probably with an eye to not alienating all his patrons and sympathizers, especially the more performative ones, he softened this a bit in an appendix to some editions (not in the Thornwillow but included in my Easton Press edition), stating that he was talking mainly about “the Christianity of slaveholding America” and that he loved the “pure, peaceful, and impartial Christianity of Christ.” He doesn’t mention where he saw the latter and whether it was in institutional form but hopefully he did see it in the rare individual.

The essays by Gates that close the book, Binary Oppositions and Camera Obscura, are very interesting as companion pieces to Douglass’ slim text. The first essay starts by defining slave narratives, like Douglass’, and juxtaposing them to the plantation novels, like Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Gone with the Wind, that opposed and sought to negate the power of the slave narrative. It then goes into the creation of the class binary that was created to make the chasm between the slaver and the enslaved immeasurable. And the deliberate and diabolical legality of it all, such as the flipping of the Western patrilineal legal system for whites into a matrilineal system for blacks so that the master’s progeny could not inherit their father’s property and could still be considered property to be bought, sold, and used, like their raped mothers. Indeed, Douglass’ book describes what Gates calls “American cannibalism”, once more unwilling to pull any punches when describing the odiousness of the American system of slavery.

In Camera Obscura, Gates expands his case regarding the impact photography had upon Douglass’ efforts to expose the inhumanity and blatant ignorance of slavery. He draws parallels between the way a camera obscura works and the way rhetorical chiasmus was used by Douglass. Interestingly he starts the essay off with W. E. B. Du Bois complaining about white photographers’ disinterest in learning how to photograph people of color. Ansel Adams and others eventually solved the problem by developing the Zone System. But probably more to make better landscape photographs than better portraits of black people.

Gates also builds a case for an 1844 Emerson speech being the catalyst and one of the prime movers for Douglass’ writing and activism. The essay firmly points at Douglass as the person Emerson had in mind when he developed his archetype of the “anti-slave.” And finally, he points out that Douglass’ use of photography and his writings were his weapons against the ever-expanding supply of racial stereotypes being used against black people, as well as his realization that the problem would need to be attacked from multiple fronts (or media).

These illuminating essays make the Thornwillow edition an important addition to the Douglass oeuvre and an invaluable resource in understanding the roots of systemic racism in our country.

As has been my low-book-budget practice, I couldn’t resist Thornwillow’s paper-wrapped edition at $100. I’m just glad to be able to get a letterpress edition of a novel or literary work I want to read and re-read at that price point. Yes, I’d love to be in a position to get or review one of the other states but at least I can afford something. Often this is not the case with private press books. And Thornwillow is one of the few regularly doing main literature form I read: novels.

This edition is a bit different from the other Thornwillow titles I have in that there are no illustrations commissioned for and spread throughout the main text. But the section of photographic portraits that transition between Douglass’ and Gates’ texts are very interesting and “illustrate” the points made in the preface and essays. Note that this also meant I took less photographs of the book than I might have otherwise as there seemed less need. But I hope the reader gets a good feel for the book from what I have taken and what Thornwillow has achieved with this particular book. It’s a simply designed book fitting to the narrative. I’m very happy to upgrade my Easton Press edition to the Thornwillow; the former will probably make room on my shelves for another book at some point, although I might have to keep it just for the appendix.