Frederick Douglass Character Analysis in Stamped from the Beginning

Frederick Douglass was an abolitionist and writer who was enslaved from birth but self-emancipated and went on to write the highly influential Interesting Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave. Garrison and Douglass worked together for a time and Garrison wrote the preface to Douglass’s Narrative; however, Douglass grew sick of the paternalism of Garrison and the white abolitionist movement in general and ended up distancing himself from him. Douglass refused to vote for Abraham Lincoln for president due to Lincoln’s poor record in supporting Black people while he was an Illinois congressman.

Frederick Douglass Character Timeline in Stamped from the Beginning

The timeline below shows where the character Frederick Douglass appears in Stamped from the Beginning. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.

...gathering of abolitionists on Nantucket Island, during which he meets a young fugitive named Frederick Douglass. Impressed by his rhetorical skill, the Massachusetts Antislavery Society gives Douglass a job as a... (full context)

The Invention of Blackness and Whiteness Theme Icon

In 1845, Douglass publishes The Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, which becomes a... (full context)

Garrison praises Uncle Tom’s Cabin, although he is troubled by its emphasis on submissiveness. Douglass offers an assimilationist critique of Stowe’s support of colonization. Yet the Black writer and doctor... (full context)

...an antiracist parody of 19th-century race science and polygenesis in particular. In his own reflections, Douglass points out that no one believed in polygenesis before Atlantic slavery and that polygenesists almost... (full context)

At the same time, Douglass embraces the climate theory notion that the hair and skin of Black people in America... (full context)

...slave states seceding from the North. This starts with Southern Democrats leaving the Democratic Party. Douglass refuses to vote for Lincoln in the 1860 presidential election, despite admiring Lincoln’s courage and... (full context)

...Lincoln remains in favor of colonization, which earns him the scorn of both Garrison and Douglass. In 1862, Lincoln writes an article in the National Intelligencer clarifying that his primary intention... (full context)

In 1866, Douglass attempts to persuade Andrew Johnson to grant Black people voting rights, but Johnson is resistant.... (full context)

...Grant resurrects the idea of colonization, suggesting that Black people relocate to the Dominic Republic. Douglass joins this plan, enthusiastic about the racist idea of Black Americans helping “uplift the impoverished... (full context)

...on a supposedly growing rate of Black crime. Both Du Bois and the elderly Frederick Douglass accept this false excuse, but journalist and anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells does not. In... (full context)

...is an influential educator who takes over as the nation’s most prominent Black leader following Douglass’s death in 1895. He encourages Black people to accept a lower status in life in... (full context)