Modern Day Abolitionist

The American Writers Museum opened a new exhibit last week: Frederick Douglass-Agitator, celebrating the life and work of Frederick Douglass.  In connection with the exhibit, the museum has lined up a series of events and speakers to honor the life of this great American.  I attended the first event, featuring Kenneth B. Morris, Jr., a direct descendant of both Douglass and Booker T. Washington.  On a beautiful, warm summer Chicago night, a night on which most people would prefer to be outside, the place was nearly full, with only an empty seat or two.

The charismatic Mr. Morris spun his connection to the legendary Frederick Douglass in a moving presentation.  Morris’s grandmother lived to be 103, and actually knew Mr. Douglass first hand.  “I touched the hands that touched the hands,” Mr. Morris proclaimed.  He went on to share anecdotes about the indominable Mr. Douglass, about his struggle for freedom, his drive to educate himself despite obstacles and actual laws that forbade educating slaves, “because they would not be fit to work in the fields.” He talked about how his mother would work the fields, walk 12 miles to see Frederick and then walk back at night to work another day just to spend time with him.  He talked about his abolitionist friends purchasing Frederick’s freedom. 

Morris reveled in his connection to both Douglass and Washington.  He told the story about his visit to Douglass’s home, where Douglass’s shoes are next to his bed stand, and how he had to fight the urge to step into his shoes.

I was captivated by Morris and his obvious pride in his lineage and his connection to this great man.   His testimony helped me think about the great stain of slavery more deeply and will propel me to read Douglass’s biography.  Morris has dedicated himself to eliminate slavery as it exists currently around the world.  His message is that American slavery was not that long ago, really, and that it exists in many forms in different places globally.

I bought a coffee table book of photographs of Douglass, for which Morris had written the afterward.  I waiting in line to get my book signed and in front of me was a middle aged, dapper African American man, who grasped Morris’s outstretched hand with both hands and pulled him close.  “He [Douglass] was right.  It’s all about education, isn’t it?”   “You bet.”  There was something about that exchange that heartened me in this crazy political climate.

Likewise, I have visited the Illinois Holocaust Museum to attend programs and to hear testimonies of the camp survivors.   As the number of actual camp survivors has dwindled with age and time, the Illinois Holocaust Museum has harnessed technology to keep them alive and relevant and has used holographic imagery that is interactive to permit virtual discussions and question and answer sessions that bring the camp experience to life.

In my own life, the oral histories of the Communist terrors have been passed down either first hand or second hand and, like the Gulag Archipelago, they have been formative in shaping my views of Communism.  I heard first hand stories of the Stalin purges, of teenagers being shot in the head in front of their friends.   Parents of my friends fled and hid in ditches and sewers.  The parents of one of my friends fled a Stalin concentration camp and were chased by guards and dogs through the woods before winding their way to America.  He was a teacher and she wrote childrens’ books, so as “intellectuals” they would almost certainly have been murdered during the deportations from Lithuania.

The three great stains that landed on American and European soil were slavery, Nazism and Communism.  All three crushed the human spirit and all three resulted in people being hunted like animals.   It’s fine to read about these horrors in books, and we should.   But the oral histories given by people that either experienced it or have a personal connection to it are what bring them alive and keep them relevant to us, so they are not forgotten.   We need to hear these stories so we can stay vigilant against evil forces that are capable of unspeakable cruelty and stripping us of our freedoms.   We cannot leave them solely to books or digital archives.

Places like the Illinois Holocaust Museum and the American Writers Museum can and should do that for us.  I was honored and grateful to have an opportunity to meet Mr. Morris and “touch the hands that touched the hands that touched the hands.”