“We are like whalers who have been long on a chase. We have at last got the harpoon into the monster, but we must now look how we steer, or with one flop of his tail he will yet send us all into eternity.” President Lincoln, reflecting on his signing The Emancipation Proclamation. – “Lincoln’s Gamble,” by Todd Brewster.
They called Frederick Douglass the “Lion of Anacostia.” When he stood on the porch of his Cedar Hill home overlooking the city of Washington, D.C., he must have seemed like a giant. World-famous speaker, best-selling author, and influential newspaper editor – he gave every ounce of his energy to the cause of abolishing slavery and championing civil rights.
Historians all agree Douglass (1818-1895) was the most prominent African American figure and leader of the 19th-century. One of his biographers, L. Diane Barnes, offered this summary of his life:
Because of his broad range of concerns, Douglass’s influence extends far beyond the black community. His ability to embrace and articulate the natural rights liberalism of the American Revolution and the nation’s founding documents makes him not just a black leader of the nineteenth century but a leading American voice in modern times. (“Frederick Douglass: Reformer and Statesman”)
The fourth of six children, Frederick Douglass was born into slavery in 1818 on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Sadly, his birth site at Holme Hill Farm, a short walk from the winding Tuckahoe Creek in Talbot County, is void of any historical properties and is not accessible to the public. Six miles to the southwest lies Easton, the county seat where a statue of Douglass was erected in 2011.
Douglass’s mother, Harriet Bailey, who died when her son was just seven, was enslaved to Aaron Anthony. He was the chief overseer of thirteen farms owned by the wealthy Lloyd family. Anthony, a white man, is believed to be Douglass’s father.
Separated from his mother when he was only a few weeks old, Douglass was raised by his grandparents. Like many enslaved persons, Douglass endured cruel hardships. He slept on the floor of a wood cabin. A slave breaker beat him. The staple of his diet was mushy corn meal. His tattered clothing had to last for years. The cool water he fetched every morning was not that far from the Mason-Dixon line, but freedom must have seemed a million miles away.
When he turned twenty, Douglass escaped his bondage and made his way northward along the Underground Railroad. On September 15, 1838, he married Anna Murray in New York; she had been born free in Maryland. The two had met in Baltimore.
Douglass and his new bride made their way to New Bedford, Massachusetts, a maritime city not without its own prejudices, but a place where self-emancipated slaves felt a little safer from bounty hunters. Douglass honed his skills as a boat caulker on the shore of New Bedford.
Inspired by the famous abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879), who published the weekly journal The Liberator from 1831 to 1865, and co-founded the American Anti-Slavery Society (1833-1876), Douglass became a powerful participant in the anti-slavery movement. With his six-foot frame, booming voice and vivid descriptions of a life as a slave, Douglass electrified his audiences in the East and Midwestern states. Novelist Charles Chesnutt noted that those who saw Douglass, “never forgot his burning words, his pathos, nor the rich play of his humor.”
Douglass also spread his message with his pen. Published in 1845 when he was just 27, “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave,” sold more than 30,000 copies and captured the attention of the nation. Historian David Blight points out:
The most artistically crafted and widely read of all the American slave narratives, Douglass’s first of three autobiographies is at once a work of imaginative literature, abolitionist argument, and historical analysis.
Not to be forgotten is the heavy price Douglass paid for publicly telling his story. “I was constantly in danger,” he later wrote. Fearing re-capture, Douglass fled to England where he stayed for two years and continued to speak out against slavery.
With his freedom purchased by his British supporters, Douglass returned to the states in 1847, reunited with Anna, and settled down in Rochester, New York. In the basement of a church, he launched and edited, The North Star, an anti-slavery newspaper. Douglass and Anna spent the next 20 years in Rochester, where they raised their five children. Sadly, Annie, their fifth child, passed away when she was 11.
Douglass also lent the weight of his message to suffragists such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton. In 1848, he attended the Seneca Falls Convention in New York, the first women's rights convention. Speaking as the only black person in the hall, he said - “In this denial of the right to participate in government, not merely the degradation of woman and the perpetuation of a great injustice happens, but the maiming and repudiation of one-half of the moral and intellectual power of the government of the world.”
In 1863, with the Civil War in its third year, Douglass traveled to Washington where he spoke with President Lincoln on the need for better treatment for black soldiers serving in the Union Army. His mere presence in the Presidential mansion, served as a milestone on the Civil Rights timeline. Of their meeting, historian John Stauffer (“Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln”) points out:
It was the first meeting that an African American and a U.S. President had met as near equals in the sense that they were cultural ambassadors of their respective races.
After a fire destroyed their home in Rochester in 1872 (arson was suspected) Douglass and Anna moved to a townhouse in Washington steps from the Capitol. Using his political influence, Douglass helped re-elect President Grant. In 1877, he was appointed U.S. Marshall for the District of Columbia by President Rutherford B. Hayes, becoming the first African American to hold the position. In 1889, President Benjamin Harrison named Douglass to be the U.S. Minister to Haiti.
Five years after arriving in Washington, Douglass purchased a 14-room country house overlooking the capital city. This transaction broke the “whites only” restrictive covenant in Uniontown, which we know today as Anacostia. Since 1972, his historic home, ran by the National Park Service, has been open to the public.
Douglass lost Anna to heart disease in 1882. Two years later, he married his long-time friend, Helen Pitts, a white woman who co-edited Alpha, a journal of the Moral Education Society.
Despite his advancing age, Douglass continued to give fiery reform speeches and served as an elder statesman for black Americans, as well as continuing to be a Republican Party insider. In 1893, at age 75, he spoke before large audiences on more than two dozen occasions.
One of his last speeches took place in Alexandria on September 24, 1894. It would prove to be his last appearance on Southern soil. The Great One was five months from meeting his Maker.
Emancipation Day Celebrations
The occasion that brought Douglass to Alexandria was the 31st anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. In the second half of the 19th-century, and well into the 20th-century, African Americans celebrated President Lincoln’s wartime measure that he developed in the summer of 1862, and gave the following January 1st. A typical celebration, whose origins go back to slave activities during end-of-year holidays, featured memorial meetings, parades and pageants, religious gatherings, speeches, and entertainment through music and dance.
Emancipation Day celebrations took place on varying days. Some localities celebrated on January 1, the date the Emancipation Proclamation came into effect in 1863. Historians often point out this measure was watered down and limited in scope. Nevertheless, the black community felt strong ties to this date. Many of them knew the first day of each year had been the traditional time when slaves were sold at auction.
More importantly is a point Kathleen Clark makes in her book, Defining Moments:
African Americans seized upon the president’s action as a resounding affirmation of their own understanding of the ongoing national conflict – that it was a battle between slavery and freedom.
Equally important were the actions the Emancipation Proclamation triggered. As an exhibit at the National Archives points out:
While the Emancipation Proclamation did not end slavery in the nation, it fundamentally transformed the character of the Civil War. After January 1, 1863, every advance of federal troops expanded the domain of freedom. Moreover, the liberated themselves became liberators, for the proclamation announced the acceptance of black men into the Union army and navy. By the end of the war, nearly 200,000 black soldiers and sailors had fought for the Union and freedom. The Emancipation Proclamation added moral force to the Union cause and strengthened the Union both militarily and politically.
Some Emancipation Day events were held on September 22nd, the day President Lincoln issued the preliminary proclamation in 1862. This date provided warmer weather, so outdoor events were more common than in January. In election years, some leaders used the September 22nd events to campaign for candidates in the run up to the November elections.
In the District of Columbia, April 16 was the date Lincoln signed “The District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act” in 1862. One particular Emancipation Day celebration in Washington in the 1880s was described as the “biggest event ever for the colored race.”
“Juneteenth” is celebrated in many states, and traces its origins to Texas. On June 19, 1865, Union General Gordon Granger read a Special Order in Galveston that said:
“The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.
Some African Americans wanted a consensus for a single date nationwide, but local traditions were too entrenched. No agreement was ever reached.
Like all such days of celebration and commemoration, Emancipation Day meant different things to different people.
Clark (“Defining Moments: African American Commemoration and Political Culture” in the South, 1863-1913”) puts her finger on a greater meaning:
“In the years following Emancipation, as African Americans labored to define themselves in ways that would legitimate their claims to citizenship and promote progress in the South, commemorative celebrations became critical forums for constructing collective African American identities for both black and white audiences.”
An online exhibit at the National Museum of American History (“Changing America”) summarizes the full impact of Emancipation Day celebrations:
Each Emancipation Day, African Americans organized parades reminding the black community and the entire nation of a commitment that remained unfulfilled. These local celebrations set the stage for the national push for freedom in the 20th century. Modern civil rights activists built upon the legacy of their forebears when they gathered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. They asked the nation to realize the promises set in motion by the Emancipation Proclamation.
African Americans in the post-Reconstruction Period
In the years following the end of the Civil War, black Americans made great strides. Summing up their progress, Jonathon Daniels Wells pointed out in his book, “A House Divided: The Civil War and Nineteenth-Century America:”
“by the late 1800s, a new middle class of African American professionals and businessmen had emerged to play prominent roles in economy and society.”
With each passing year, however, Americans of color witnessed a backlash against their gains in position and power. Intimidation, violence and legislative measures enacted in the Southern states erased the progress that had been made possible with the passage of the “Reconstruction Amendments” (the 13th, 14th and 15th).
Most heartbreaking of all, African Americans lived with the knowledge that lynchings had become all too common. During the period from 1880 to 1930, mobs killed more than 2,000 blacks. The ghastly sight even took place in Alexandria, including the hangings of Joseph McCoy in 1897 and Benjamin Thomas in 1899. Over 2,000 whites witnessed the midnight lynching of Thomas at the corner of King and Fairfax streets. (By way of comparison, author John Muller, in his book, “The Sage of Anacostia,” points out “there is no record of a lynching having ever occurred within today’s city limits of Washington, D.C.”)
By the turn of the century, “Jim Crow” laws were well on their way to forcing segregation of blacks in the South, as well as other parts of the country. This landscape of violence and discrimination contributed to reducing the number of Emancipation Day celebrations.
Emancipation Day Celebrations in Alexandria
In some cities and towns, Emancipation Day celebrations had a long and continuous history. In others, it took a while to develop a tradition, if at all. In Alexandria, Emancipation Day celebrations began in 1889 and lasted for over a decade before dying out in the early part of the 20th-century.
The middle of the 1890s was something of a golden age in the seaport when the keynote speakers included Douglass in 1894 and John Mercer Langston in 1895 and 1897. Langston was the first black person elected to the United States Congress from Virginia, and the last for another century.
The first two Emancipation Day celebrations in Alexandria (1889 and 1890) were held at the Third Baptist Church at the corner of North Patrick and Princess streets. Third Baptist also hosted in 1897 when Langston spoke.
Lannon’s Opera House on King Street also hosted three times, while the Shiloh Baptist Church at Duke and West streets and the Odd Fellows Hall on S. Columbus Street each hosted once.
Alexandria’s Emancipation Day celebration in 1894 was held on September 24th at Lannon’s Opera House. The 24th was a Monday, chosen to not conflict with the weekend.
The Washington Bee called the day’s events “a great success.” Credit for that success goes in large part to one man in particular. That man was Magnus L. Robinson. Born in Alexandria in 1852, he rose from humble beginnings to become one of the area’s most respected citizens. Robinson was editor of Alexandria’s Weekly Leader and was instrumental in starting the Emancipation Day tradition in the city. He presided over many of the gatherings. Several times he hosted dinners at his home at 606 Gibbon Street. His friendship with Douglass was instrumental in inviting him to be the speaker in 1894.
Around 4 pm, the parade arrived at its end point at Lannon’s Opera House. The entertainment venue sat on the southwest corner of King and S. Pitt streets (500-508), occupied today by La Madeleine restaurant. Built only a decade earlier, the brick building with tall upper windows hosted plays and public events. A year after its grand opening, hundreds poured inside to mourn the death of President Grant. In 1891, Madame Sissieretta Jones, a famed black soprano singer, performed in front of an audience that included both blacks and whites.
Both floors of Lannon’s were packed for the Emancipation Day event. Reported attendance figures are always questionable, but more than 1,500 likely were present that day.
Douglass Makes One of His Last Speeches
Robinson called the meeting to order. George W. Stewart, a prominent civic leader in Fairfax County, took the podium to introduce Douglass. One reporter noted Douglass was well received by the audience.
None of the newspapers printed the entirety of Douglass’s speech, but some noted his message centered on what the newspapers were calling “the Negro problem.” The elder statesman expressed his dislike of that term, noting it was prejudicial against black Americans. A year earlier he had spoken at the World Columbian Exposition in Chicago. He famously said, “There is no negro problem. The problem is whether the American people have loyalty enough, honor enough, patriotism enough, to live up to their own Constitution.”
We have no other details of Douglass’s speech in Alexandria. We do have, however, the observations of a few of his colleagues and historians. Describing an Emancipation Day speech he gave in Washington, David Blight points out that Douglass “made their hearts pound and their throats choke.”
The women’s rights leader Elizabeth Cady Stanton once referred to Douglass’s bearing this way:
“he stood there like an African prince, conscious of his dignity and power, grand in his physical proportions, majestic in his wrath.”
In the days before microphones and amplification, a speaker did well to project his or her voice. Douglass had such gifts. According to one author (Michael Kammen, “Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture”) “his voice thundered like an Old Testament prophet.”
The Lion’s Last Roar
On February 20th, just five months after his appearance in Alexandria, Douglass was eating dinner with his second wife Helen at their Cedar Hill home, which stands just three miles from the shore of Alexandria. Perhaps they were discussing his 76th birthday, or that afternoon’s meeting of the National Council of Women in Washington which they attended.
At some point during their meal, Douglass stood up and then fell to the floor. A heart attack had taken his last breath away and left black Americans without a leader.
In his book, “Frederick Douglass in Washington, D.C.,” John Muller tells us about the last great speech Douglass delivered at the AME Church in Washington in January, 1894. Douglass had said,
“But the favor with which this cowardly proposition of disenfranchisement has been received by public men, white and black, by Republicans as well as Democrats, has shaken my faith in the nobility of the nation. I hope and trust all will come out right in the end, but the immediate future looks dark and troubled. I cannot shut my eyes to the ugly facts before me.”
Unfortunately, the “ugly facts” got worse and worse.
In 1896, just one year after Douglass’s passing, the Supreme Court’s ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson paved the way for legalized discrimination. In their landmark 7-1 decision, the court upheld the constitutionality of state laws requiring racial segregation in public facilities under the so-called “separate but equal” doctrine.
After the turn of the century, thousands of black Americans were re-enslaved under a system of peonage, a convict leasing system that falsely imprisoned black Americans and forced them into labor in coal mines, quarries and farm plantations.
In 1918, the silent drama film “The Birth of a Nation” gave its audiences, as Blight puts it, “the message that emancipation had been America’s greatest and most dangerous disaster.”
Between 1882 and 1944, lynchings took a heavy toll on black Americans. More than 3,400 were killed by mobs, an average of slightly more than one a week. Author Philip Dray points out it was not until 1952 that a full year went by without a reported racial lynching somewhere in the United States, most often in the Deep South.
Congress made feeble attempts to help disenfranchised blacks, but Southern legislators blocked their efforts.
Concluding Thoughts
Historian Kathleen Clark has pointed out something very important in the way we try to understand American history.
The very real accomplishments of African Americans, coupled with the expansion of black institutions, weigh against an interpretation of unstinting black oppression in the post-Reconstruction South.
Despite all the obstacles and barriers they faced, African Americans continued to push forward. Charles Hamilton Houston, who was born and raised in Washington, D.C, mentored future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. Houston played a prominent role in helping to end the “separate, but equal” laws that discriminated against black Americans for over 50 years.
Women such as Maggie Lena Walker of Richmond, Virginia blazed trails. She became the first black woman president of a bank, one that is still in operation today. The NAACP and the Urban League built a mighty legacy of assistance.
As seen right here in Alexandria, people of color built successful businesses and civic institutions, produced great leaders and role model citizens, achieved important goals, and demonstrated courageous resiliency the face of discrimination.
Frederick Douglass did not live to see any of these success stories. But as the “Father of Civil Rights,” and a human rights reformer, he inspired others to take action.
An important part of that action was the annual Emancipation Day events and what they had to say about the continuing search for equality. Speaking of those who helped sustain this tradition, author Clark points out:
“All Americans have cause to give them thanks. Through dark and dispiriting years, black southerners maintained a path toward a better future.”
In his book, “The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow,” author James Worley made similar comments to conclude his book:
To continue the battle against racial prejudice in the future requires strengths borrowed from the past. Those who struggle today can draw inspiration from the men and women who stood up and said no in the time of Jim Crow.
Primary Sources
Newspapers
Alexandria Gazette
Colored American
Washington Bee
Washington Evening Post
Washington Post
Washington Times
Published Sources
Bah, Char McCargo, Christa Waters, Audrey P. Davis, Gwendolyn Brown-Henderson and James E. Henson, Sr. African Americans of Alexandria, Virginia, Beacons of Light in the Twentieth Century. The History Press. 2013.
Barnes, L. Diane. Frederick Douglass, Reformer and Statesman. Routledge. 2013.
Beatty, Jack. The Age of Betrayal, The Triumph of Money in America, 1865-1900. Vintage Books. 2008.
Blackmon, Douglas. Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II. Anchor Books. 2008.
Blight, David. Race and Reunion, The Civil War in American Memory. The Belknap Press. 2001.
Brundage, W. Fitzhugh. Lynching in the New South, Georgia and Virginia, 1880-1930. University of Illinois Press, 1993
Clark, Kathleen Ann. Defining Moments: African American Commemoration and Political Culture. The University of North Carolina Press, 2005.
Combs, George K, Leslie Anderson and Julia M. Downie. Alexandria, Images of America. Arcadia Publishing. 2012.
Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave. The Belknap Press. Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Frederickson, George M. The Black Image in the White Mind, The Debate on Afro-American Character and Destiny, 1817-1914. Wesleyan University Press. 1987.
Kachun, Mitchell Alan. Festivals of Freedom: Memory and Meaning in African American Emancipation. University of Massachusetts. 2003
Litwicki, Ellen M. America's Public Holidays, 1865-1920. Smithsonian Institution Press. 2000.
McFeely, William S. Frederick Douglass. W.W. Norton & Company. 1991.
Muller, John. The Lion of Anacostia, Frederick Douglass in Washington, D.C. The History Press. 2010
Pulliam, Ted. Historic Alexandria: An Illustrated History. Historical Publishing Network. First Edition. 2011.
Smith, William Francis and T. Michael Miller. A Seaport Saga, Portrait of Old Alexandria, Virginia. The Donning Company Publishers. Third Edition. 2001.
Stauffer, John. Giants, The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. Twelve. 2008.
Wiggins, William H. O Freedom! Afro-American Emancipation Celebrations. The University of Tennessee Press. 1990.
Williams, Kidida E. They Left Their Marks on Me, African American Testimonies of Racial Violence from Emancipation to World War I. New York University Press. 2012.
Wormer, Richard. The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, St. Martin’s Griffin. 2003.
Special Thanks to:
Roberta Chew, Editor
Fran Bromberg, Ruth Reeder, Anna Lynch, Becca Siegal, Whitney Stohr and the staff at Alexandria Archaeology Museum
FOAA members, Friends of Alexandria Archaeology
George Combs, Julia Downie, and Mark Zoeter and the staff at Alexandria Library, Barrett Branch, Special Collections
John Muller, historian and author of “Frederick Douglass in Washington, D.C.”
Craig Keith, Craig Keith Design
Nate Johnson, Mark Maloy and the staff at the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site
Dr. Zoe Trodd, Professor of History, University of Nottingham
Dr. Audrey Davis and the staff at the Alexandria Black History Museum
Char McCargo Bah, Professional Genealogist, Author, Independent Historian in Alexandria
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