On Sunday, March 16th I preached the following sermon at the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church - Unitarian Universalist. In my mind it is part of what I call our Jefferson's Legacies Initiative, programs and efforts recognizing that our name gives us much to champion, but also an imperative to work for the eradication of the racism and oppression that can be directly linked to the system of enslavement in which he participated.
If you want to hear this sermon, it will be podcast on our website.
“Sincerely and earnestly hoping that this little book may do something toward throwing light on the American slave system, and hastening the glad day of deliverance to the millions of my brethren in bonds—faithfully relying upon the power of truth, love, and justice, for success in my humble efforts—and solemnly pledging myself anew to the sacred cause,—I subscribe myself, Frederick Douglass. Lynn, Mass., April 28, 1845”
Seven years before the 1852
publication of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s influential anti-slavery novelUncle Tom’s Cabin, and the publication
the next year of Twelve Years a Slave by
Solomon Northup, Frederick Douglass published his first autobiography, Narrative Life of Frederick Douglass, an American
Slave. Ten years later, in 1855, he
published his second autobiography, My
Bondage and My Freedom, which gives this sermon its title.
I don’t generally give what
in some circles are appropriately called “book report sermons.” I don’t subscribe to the “lecture and
concert” theory of Unitarian Universalist worship. But I’ve got to tell you – while I knew
Douglass’ name, of course, what I’ve learned about his story while preparing
for this morning has astounded me. I’m
hoping it will astound you, too.
The man who came to be known
as Frederick Douglass was born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, sometime
during 1818, most likely in February. At
the beginning of his Narrative Life
he said, "I
have no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen any authentic record
containing it." He had no clear
memory of his mother, either, because it was the custom in the part of Maryland
he was from to separate a mother and her children as soon as possible. He said he never even saw her “by the light
of day” because while she would lay down with him to help him to sleep she
would be long gone by the time he woke up.
He was moved from one “owner” to the
next – and I put “owner” in quotes because, of course, no human can actually own another, no matter what
some have thought. When he was twelve he
had been given to a man named Hugh Auld and his wife Sophia. An appropriate name, actually, because Sophia
taught Douglass the alphabet, even though it was illegal to teach enslaved
people to read or write. When her
husband discovered what she’d been doing he strongly disapproved, and offered
what Douglass later referred to as the "first decidedly antislavery
lecture" he’d ever heard – he said that if a slave were to learn to read
he would become discontented with his situation in life and begin to long for
freedom. Truer words were never spoken,
and it was in this encounter, perhaps, that set in place Douglass’ life-long
belief that, as he put it, “knowledge is the pathway from slavery to
freedom.” It is known that on his own
Douglass learned to read and to write from watching white children and the men
with whom he worked.
When he was hired out to a man named
William Freeland – a rather ironic name this time – he began to teach the other
enslaved people on the plantation to read and write. The enslaved on other plantations heard of
these lessons and would come to the Sunday School Douglass had begun, as many
as 40 at a time. While his own so-called
owner didn’t seem to mind what was happening in the Sunday School, other
plantation owners did, and one day they burst in on the assembly with clubs and
stones. Shortly thereafter, he was moved
to the farm of a man named Edward Covey, whom Douglass described as, “first rate
hand at breaking young negroes."
Now bear in mind – all this happened
before Douglass was sixteen years old!
And it was this young man’s youthful and rebellious spirit that Covey
tried to break. Douglass endured
countless beatings and whippings at Covey’s hand, but eventually he fought back. He literally fought back, fighting both Covey
and his cousin for over two hours before finally emerging victorious. Covey never beat him again after that.
Douglass had tried to escape when he was
with William Freeland, and he tried again when he was with Edward Covey, but he
was never successful. In 1836 – when he
was eighteen years old – Douglass met a free Black woman named Anna
Murray. She had seven older brothers and
sisters who’d been born into slavery, but her mother had been manumitted just
before Anna’s birth, so she and her four younger siblings were born free. She and Douglass fell in love, and she helped
him, finally, to escape the enslavement.
(Their daughter Rosetta would later remind people who idolized her
father that his was a story, “made possible by the unswerving loyalty of Anna
Murray.”)
Of his newfound freedom, Douglass would
write, 'I felt as one might feel upon escape from a den of hungry lions. Anguish and grief, like darkness and rain,
may be depicted; but gladness and joy, like the rainbow, defy the skill of pen
or pencil.” He sent for Anna, and the
two were married just eleven days after he’d arrived in New York – it was
September 15, 1838.
September 15th – that’s the
day my son Theo was born, 163 years later.
A lot has changed in that time, yet not as much as we – and especially
we white folk – would like to believe.
As recently as this past week a man named Jim Brown, who was running for
Congress in Arizona’s 2nd District, wrote on his FaceBook page,
“Back in the day of slavery, slaves were
kept in slavery by denying them education and opportunity while providing them
with their basic needs … Not by beating them and starving them. (Although there were isolated cases of
course.) Basically slave owners took
pretty good care of their slaves and livestock and this kept business rolling
along.”
I don’t know what infuriates
me more, his assertion that “slave owners took pretty good care of their
slaves,” or his casual equivalence of “slaves” and “livestock,” or that he’s
still out there on the campaign trail and might still have the opportunity of
serving this country in Congress. How
much has changed, really?
I recently read, too, about
a teacher in Ohio – who was, thankfully, suspended after this incident – who
allegedly responded to one of his African American students who had expressed
the desire to one day be President, “We do not need another black
President.” The teacher denies the
allegations, of course, but can we deny that such things are being said, are
being thought, around the country. When
President Obama recently sat down for a mock, comedy interview on the internet
showBetween Two Ferns with Zach
Galifianakis as
a way of promoting the Affordable Care Act to a demographic unreached by the
usual media, one the host’s classically inappropriate and uncomfortable
questions was, “So … what’s it like being the last Black President?” (To which Mr. Obama replied, “What’s it like
for this to be the last time you talk with a President?”) But you know people are thinking it. You know people are wishing it. You know that people are actively organizing
and working to ensure that there never will be another person of color in the
White House. You know it. How far have we come, really?
Back to Douglass – he became fervent speaker on the
Abolitionist circuit. William Lloyd
Garrison became both an inspiration and an ardent supporter. Yet when his first
autobiography, Narrative Life was
published people were skeptical that a black man could write such an eloquent
book. (It reminds me of all the
commentators who fell over themselves in 2008 to say how eloquent then
candidate Obama was. Remember that?)
As his reputation grew there were those who feared
that Douglass’ so-called “owner” would try to get his “property” back, and so
he was encouraged to go abroad and speak in Ireland and England as other free
African Americans had so successfully done.
Of this experience, Douglass wrote:
"Eleven days and a half gone and I
have crossed three thousand miles of the perilous deep. Instead of a democratic
government, I am under a monarchical government. Instead of the bright, blue
sky of America, I am covered with the soft, grey fog of the Emerald Isle
[Ireland]. I breathe, and lo! the chattel [slave] becomes a man. I gaze around
in vain for one who will question my equal humanity, claim me as his slave, or
offer me an insult. I employ a cab—I am seated beside white people—I reach the
hotel—I enter the same door—I am shown into the same parlour—I dine at the same
table—and no one is offended... I find myself regarded and treated at every
turn with the kindness and deference paid to white people. When I go to church,
I am met by no upturned nose and scornful lip to tell me, 'We don't allow
niggers in here!'"
I want to be clear that I’ve
intentionally chosen to retain Douglass’ own language there not only for
historical accuracy but because I want this to be uncomfortable. I want it to be painful. It can be so easy to hear all of this history
in an abstract way, in a distant way, in a disconnected way. And that, perhaps, is often the lecturer’s
way. But I’m a preacher, and this is a
sanctuary, and we’re here for a sermon.
So all of this background, all of this history, is to bring us to this
point – whether it’s the story of Frederick Douglass, or Solomon Northup, or Harriet
Tubman, or Sojourner Truth, or (closer to home) Isaac Jefferson, or Sally Hemings
(of whom there is no known image, although this may be one of her daughters), these
are stories that need to be told, and retold, and engraved in our memories and
on our hearts because unless we do we are really all still enslaved to them,
whether we know it or not.
Michelle Alexander’s powerful book The New Jim Crow makes an extremely
strong case that there is a clear progression from the oppressions and
dehumanization of slavery, to the Jim Crow laws that followed on the heels of
slavery’s nominal end, to the current system of mass incarceration which
overwhelmingly and, she argues, quite intentionally targets people of
color. Slavery kept Black Americans out
of public life, as did Jim Crow, and today an African American woman or man who
has served time as a result of “America’s War on Drugs” can find themselves
legally stripped of the right to vote, can be denied housing and public
assistance, and can find it nearly impossible to get a foot in the door in the
job market because of that one question on most application forms – have you
ever been convicted of a felony?
We need to hear these stories, and tell
these stories because it is so important that we remember – when we are in our
own private despair or lose strength for the struggles that still need to be
waged – we need to remember that despite the most oppressive of beginnings a
person likeFrederick Douglass, or Malcolm X, can rise to accomplish astonishing
things.
I thought of Malcolm X while I was
reading about Douglass and tried to imagine the conversations they might
have. I was struck by their mutual
insistence that education was the key to freedom, and then about how much
history, and truth, has been lost and denied as a result of oppression and
suppression. And it’s not as if racism
stands alone. Racism, Classism, Ableism,
Sexism, Heterosexism, and so many other “isms” beside, are all ways that some
of us keep others of us in perpetual second class status, keep others of us as
always being “other.”
Douglas knew this. Back in the 1800s he was saying things like,
“I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong.” He fought for the rights, for the equality of
African Americans, women, Native Americans, and recent immigrants. He was even nominated, without his approval
apparently, to be the first African American to run for Vice President as the running
mate of Victoria Woodhull on Equal Rights Party ticket of 1872. (And Woodhull’s an amazing story in her own
right, but that’ll have to wait for another day.)
Here’s a cool fact – in 1848, at the Seneca Falls
Convention at which Elizabeth Cady Stanton asked the delegates to pass a
resolution asking for women’s suffrage, the convention was far from
unified. And then a 30-year old
Frederick Douglass, the only African American in attendance, rose and
spoke. He said that he could not accept
the right to vote as a Black man if women were denied that same right. 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.” The resolution passed.
These
are stories that need to be told, and retold, and engraved in our memories and
on our hearts because unless we do we are really all still enslaved to them,
whether we know it or not. In the words
of Emma Lazarus, who also composed the poem that stands at the base of the
Statue of Liberty, “Until we are all free, we are none of us free.” She said
this a few years after the time we’ve been talking about, and it’s a refrain
lifted up again by President John F. Kennedy and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr. fifty years ago, and they are still true today. We must always
remember. We must never forget. And we must ever keep moving.
Pax tecum,
RevWik
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