American Experience; The Abolitionists; Interview with Erica Armstrong Dunbar, part 1 of 4

OK, we are on. So as you know, we're starting not when Douglas is born, but when he's dropped off, shortly after he's dropped off at the Lloyd Plantation. And so can you sketch his circumstances at that time, where was he living, what was the day for young Frederick Douglass? Sure. I think Douglas's narrative does a wonderful job of not only painting what his experience was like as a young slave, but also what other young slaves encountered on this sort of everyday level. He talks a lot about free time, sort of leisure time. And this is something that small children who were between the ages of five and really 10 or 11, who were really incapable of doing heavy field work, were left to really do errands, small tasks for masters, working within the house.

And so Douglass finds himself in a situation where he's encountering the responsibilities of a slave as a young child early on. He also encounters, in addition to being very sort of poorly fed, poorly clothed tea, it was common knowledge that young slaves often were forced to roam about plantations or small farms almost naked without clothing, without shoes. And for the Eastern Shore of Maryland, which really has to deal with all of the seasons, winter, spring, summer, fall, this is really difficult on Douglass, he talks about how he suffers from the cold, from the winter months, without appropriate clothing. So he encounters what his life as a slave on a plantation, a decent size one would really be,

but all the while sort of waiting for his real responsibilities to eventually kick in. One of the other things that Douglass encounters is this sort of startling reality of the violence connected to slavery, that the very sort of vicious beatings that he writes about in his narrative are startling, are shape his mind in new ways. And we see that violence sort of reoccur throughout his narrative and throughout his sort of description of what it means to be a slave in the 19th century in the United States. So the sort of witnessing of what appeared to be random and sometimes very calculated violence really sort of sketches his existence for the next four or five years

as a young child. One of the problems I'm sorry to do, good for sound? Yes, we're rolling. There's one big picture and one small picture question I wanted to ask you before we get to the beating of his aunt. Sure. He mentions that he was taken from his mother soon after he was born and that not only was he taken, but there was customary to do so in that area. Why would that be customary? Right. Douglass was sort of in many ways an example of the breakdown or the intended breakdown or separation between mother and children. And there are a variety of reasons for separating Douglass from his mother as well as other slave children. And Douglass comments on this in his narrative

where he says it's a very clear and calculated move on behalf of slave owners to break any kind of maternal bonds between children and their mothers. And what's interesting is that he writes nothing about fathers in part because it's expected and anticipated that slave fathers were often not a part of the picture. They were on different plantations. They were often their own masters. So that Douglass and others really concentrate on the bonds between slaves and their mothers in the case of Douglass. He writes that he never sees his mother in the light of day that because she's at a neighboring location to 10, 12 miles away, she walks those miles at night to see Douglass and that very infrequent if he sees her very few times throughout the course of his life

such that he creates no real bond with her. And that's one of the things we see and feel about Douglass as he describes his life from when he becomes a free man until his older years is that he's never really grounded in family. He's never really connected to family. He certainly doesn't really discuss them. And part of this has to do with an attempt to break down kinship networks between slaves that it was understood that these kinship networks that close relationships to mothers, to fathers, even to siblings, that it stood in the way of an efficient institution of slavery, that it provided relief, it provided happiness, it provided an area of control that slaves had,

that slave owners were unwilling to give, at least in the case of Douglass. So we see with Douglass that his relationship with his mother or the lack thereof really sort of carries, it holds on to him throughout his entire life. He's almost nomadic with very little connection and he writes as he leaves for Baltimore that he was leaving nothing behind. And this is unlike sort of many of the other slave narratives where there's quite a bit of discussion about what it is about leaving your family behind. But Douglass has no misgivings about that. And in part, it's because he has very few connections, contacts, intimate contacts with his family. Hmm. Why was Douglass's Aunt Beaton? Douglass tells the story of his aunt

who's a savagely beaten another sort of example of violence on the plantation. But her story really sort of explains the mid 19th century and the ways in which gender, sexuality, reproductive control enters into the slave narrative and the slave experience. So Douglass is aunt who was clear that she was, like, wanted, desired by, controlled by his master. And he made it quite clear that she was to remain his, in every way, physically, of course, she was his slave, but in a more intimate, sexual way. And she makes this decision. She uses her agency, autonomy, to choose to be with another man.

And we see this in other kinds of slave narratives more specifically. I'm thinking about Harriet Jacobs who does the same thing, her master wants really to keep her to himself. And she makes the decision not to have a relationship with another man. And we see this in a case of Douglass as aunt who is caught having a relationship with another man. And she's, she's savagely beaten for it. And more likely, she's savagely beaten because she has tried to control a part of her life that her master forbade her from doing so. And it was clear that following the close of the transatlantic slave trade in 1808 where reproduction, self-reproduction by slaves becomes so very important as a part of this sort of domestic slave trade that there is a need to control reproduction.

But it went deeper than that. This was his slave. This was his conquest. This was his girl. And for her to make a decision to be with someone else, not only suggested that he was unworthy of her and that she did not want to be with him, it's set also a sort of a message for the rest of the slave community that you could make the decision to run your life, even within the draconian laws of a slave community. But that when you did so, you paid the price and you paid the price dearly. And Douglass writes about this experience as really sort of life changing for him in terms of encountering the violence. Oftentimes, Douglass goes into great detail

discussing violence against women. And while we know that he was savagely beaten and that many other male slaves were, oftentimes when we hear about the savage beatings of women, it has something to do with sex. It has something to do with choosing your partner in a system that negated slave partnerships or marriage or relationships that tore families apart at the drop of a dime that to assert yourself, to assert your will, to choose your partner, all of that brought about serious consequences. That could, in essence, end your life. Thank you. Now, why was Douglass sent to Baltimore on the TV presentation? Let's see.

So Douglass, talking about kinship networks, we see kinship networks within slave owners as well. And so there is this connection between, it shows the widespread holdings of slave owners. So he leaves to go to Baltimore, and part because of his age, I believe, he's still pre-pubescent, not probably well-equipped to be in the fields growing tobacco or corn or other kinds of crops that were grown in the eastern shore. He was well-suited for housework and for being a domestic slave. And there was a need for a young boy who was a member of the old family who, really, his parents were looking for someone to care for him

and to be his playmate, to watch over him. And Douglass was chosen to be just that. So in many ways, being chosen to go to Baltimore, had a lot to do with the fact that he wasn't really well-equipped to be of much service on the eastern shore, and that perhaps a stint in Baltimore. And then his eventual return at a time when he was a teenager stronger able to engage in work was better in terms of the economy of slavery. He would be more productive. And he writes about going to Baltimore and that it is one of the life-changing moments for him that the kind of work in which he's engaged in Baltimore as a sort of caregiver, domestic slave, working at different points

inside the house, but also for others, being hired out. That's a hugely different experience from the slave plantation. Now, why didn't you? Yep. It's OK. Yep. G. D. Comer. I don't think so. I'm going to give you an updo. A French twist, please. Does that fix that, Groy? Could you just just, I think it does. And once you move out of the frame with it, I think it's just the very bottoms of few strands that are still. Yep, that's nice. Why do you think Sophia Alt decided to teach Douglas to read it only briefly?

I think Sophia Alt represents a growing number of Americans who were not engaged with the slave trade early on who have sympathy, have empathy, have show humanity in the way that they treat their slaves. And Douglas writes that she meets him for the first time with sort of a genuine care or concern, at least he feels that in the beginning of their relationship. I also think that part of it has to do with notions about motherhood, about what many historians have labeled Republican motherhood, this sort of responsibility of educating young boys

in particular. And while he was a slave, he still was a young boy. And in many ways, some of her teaching, which I'm sure she shared with her own son, lapsed into Douglas's world, I think she understood the importance of an education, of being literate, and perhaps did not understand the reasons for which slaves were prohibited from literacy. And so that's made quite clear by her husband, who once he discovers that Douglas has been taught a very fundamental basic literacy. I wouldn't even call him literate at first, but learning the fundamentals of reading, not yet writing. He scolds his wife, and he tells her, you have no idea what you've just done. If you open up a world of understanding,

if you teach slaves to read, to write, if you open these doors to knowledge, you'll ruin them. They will be completely unusable for a system of slavery. So it sort of acknowledges that there's a necessity to debate, degrade, and to keep uneducated a slave force that, if given the opportunity to learn, that it would make the system of slavery unsuccessful, that it was based upon this sort of total degradation. And just to follow this tangent, you mentioned that Sophia Alder represents a strain of sedeners at that time in the 1820s. How does that strain of sedenity change over the next 20, 30 years?

When Douglas arrives in Baltimore, it's at a time when southern slavery, and in particular, the spread of cotton, not necessarily in Maryland, but throughout the rest of the south and west, has really become a part of the southern identity that's slavery, which may or may not have been central to a southern identity prior to the boom of cotton most certainly was by the middle of early to middle part of the 19th century. So in many ways, we see a very hardened southern response to the institution of slavery as it becomes a domestic trade,

one that is no longer reliant upon African or Caribbean importation, one that is homegrown, that is American. It becomes a part of southern identity. And for folks in Maryland, for Sophia Alde, who live in a state that has a strong growing population of free blacks, it's a little schizophrenic. It's not as clear cut as perhaps the lower south where free blacks did not exist in large numbers. It was illegal. You had to sort of leave the state if you were emancipated in Maryland that was not the case. And so Alde represents in many ways this sort of transitional southern class of people

who definitely believe in slavery, who own slaves, who profit off of slave labor. Yet, they're also surrounded by free blacks, as well. Now, why was Douglas doesn't tell us why he was sent back to Kobe back to the Eastern Shore? Do you have a sense of why he was? Well, he's sent back to the Eastern Shore specifically to Kobe. To Kobe. When he arrives back at the Eastern Shore, he's older, he's more of a teenager. He's sort of coming into his own. He's beginning to challenge the practices of slavery in this sort of natural progression of maturation that the teenagers experience. And he's not a stranger to that, even on a slave plantation in the Eastern Shore of Maryland.

So in many ways, Douglas, having spent a good deal of time and bought more, having been privy to freedoms that completely not complete, but freedoms that were completely foreign to slaves in the Eastern Shore, this transforms him. It makes him question. It makes him hopeful. It makes him depressed. And so that when there's a need for Douglas to be beaten back into submission, to erase the experiences of Baltimore of hiring at one's time, of living around free people of color, he sent to Covey for this. Covey was known among his sort of local friends

and other slave holders as being a slave breaker. So for slaves who demonstrated resistance, defiance, in the smallest of ways, laziness, idleness, he was the go-to man to fix that problem. So Covey has this reputation among slave holders, but also among slaves. You knew what it meant to go to see Edward Covey that you were going for a specific reason. Why was Douglas not punished for standing up to Covey? In many ways, Douglas in his narrative writes that this to this incident, this fight with Covey changed his life.

Perhaps it changed Covey's life as well. This two-hour fierce battle that drew blood and between the two where they spend really a good amount of time battling one another in a very physical and fierce way allows Douglas to, in many ways, claim his masculinity to demonstrate that, although a slave, although degraded, that he was still a man. And Douglas uses physical violence as a demonstration of his ability to protect himself. And that he would be willing to do so at this point in his life, no matter what, he knew that by physically assaulting a white man

that his life was in danger, that it was quite possible that he would be murdered. But he's made this decision that it matters not, that his experience in Baltimore, his experience with freedom, his maturation has placed him in a position to fight back, to show agency. In the same way that his aunt used agency and choosing her own partner, Douglas does it through fisticuffs. He does it through fighting. And so Covey, who is completely surprised that Douglas not only stands his ground, but beats him pretty badly, that he, Covey's taken it back by it. He's probably also fearful of his own life. It's sort of understanding that animals

who are beaten horribly when they're attacked eventually, they snap. And for Covey, he sees that Douglas has snapped, that he's a man with very little to lose, and that he's already broken the rules of the slave plantation, which is that he put his hands on his master with the intent of beating him severely. So in many ways, Covey pulls back, because he's uncertain as to whether or not he could win this fight. But also, he's stunned. He needs to regroup. And Douglas isn't punished in part because Douglas standing up to Covey ruins, or at least jeopardizes Covey's reputation, that if he could not control someone like Douglas, not only not control him, but be severely beaten by him, what would his reputation as a slave breaker be?

How could he maintain that? He couldn't. So in many ways, Douglas used this sort of currency of reputation to protect himself. And Douglas knew this. So while Covey would threaten, I'll take you out and do what I've done before to you, which we know was bet with equal retaliation from Douglas. He threatens him, and he does it in a very public way so that people can hear it. We know he treats him differently. He treats Douglas differently. He's scared of Douglas. And in many ways, Douglas uses this to show, as I said, his manhood, his masculinity. But in some ways, it also shows the insecurities, the deep insecurities of slave owners, of slave breakers, who spend their lives beating others in order

to lift themselves up. It shows a deep insecurity in Covey and this arrival at manhood for Douglas. You probably shouldn't know what he changed to. You probably shouldn't know what he changed to.