![]() Writing his first full-length biography in nearly 30 years was never going to prove a simple task. But he is the most visible prototype of that.” ‘Beautifully human’ĭouglass was born in 1818, escaped from slavery in 1838, met Abraham Lincoln in 1863 and died in 1895. “Douglass lived that very trajectory in the 19th century, as did others. The current president’s “conservative populism”, Blight says, “is a whole set of reactions to the great changes, to generalise, of the 1960s: the various liberation movements, women’s rights, gay rights, gay marriage, and then of course all of the great changes in race relations. It’s precisely what is happening with the American conservative movement all the way back to Goldwater but especially since Reaganism, then with Gingrich’s Contract with America, and now with this phenomenon of Trumpism.” “All revolutions have counter-revolutions, and that’s precisely what happened after the civil war. We have, ever since Reaganism, frankly, lived through a sustained reaction.įrederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom, by David Blight Photograph: Simon & Schuster He finds a modern parallel: “Think of John Lewis and many, many other leaders of the civil rights movement … They’ve lived the same trajectory for more than 50 years, from ’64 and ’65, the civil rights acts, the Voting Rights Act. Blight deals with this period at length on the page, fascinated by “this question of the radical outsider who becomes the political insider and what does that do to his own psyche, his own mentality, and his own sense of himself over time?” But most know less of his third act, the 30 years after slavery’s end in which white America lashed back and he saw much of his work torn down. Many Americans, Blight says, know the story of Douglass the slave, the fugitive, the campaigner for abolition. But our subject matter remains explosive. We’re not – at least not now, over espresso on West 36th. In the 19th century they called it “disunion”, in the civil war. The life of Douglass, Blight says, contains “a tremendous set of lessons for today, whatever issue we’re discussing in this wildly diverse and amazing country we have here but a country completely divided. But it’s also true that readers always seek parallels with their own lives and times. It may be a cliche to say history teaches us to avoid the mistakes of the past, not least because we never do. And I get asked this at talk after talk: ‘What would Douglass do about Trump?’ Or, ‘What about Douglass can we think of and use now?’” I get asked this at talk after talk: ‘What would Douglass do about Trump?’ “He’s the subtext of almost anything,” he says, “whether we like it or not. ![]() ![]() In conversation, he duly concedes that the work of any historian is now coloured by the trials of the Trumpian age. ![]() Blight has already given his take: to the Washington Post on “the dangers of presidential ignorance” for the Guardian on Trump as “the gift that keeps on giving”. In February last year, marking Black History Month, Trump said: “Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is getting recognized more and more, I notice.”Īs with anything the billionaire tweets or blurts, ballyhoo and controversy followed. He laughs again when I mention Donald Trump. It’s easy to imagine his subject saying as he does: “There are times I wonder, ‘Did I already say that to this audience? No, I said that yesterday.’”īlight laughs. Now he’s riding the rails, speaking from town to town.
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