Frederick Douglass: Perpetual Learner and Reader
Author: Bobby Valentine | Filed under: Books, Frederick Douglass, Race Relations, Reading
There are few Americans I admire more than Frederick Douglass. I am personally in favor of having him named a Founding Father and replacing Thomas Jefferson on the nickle. I have read all three of his autobiographies and couple biographies.
Through February 2024, I worked my way through The Speeches of Frederick Douglass: A Critical Edition (a new compilation by Yale University Press, 2018, 645pp). I had read some of his speeches and excerpts from many. But whole texts of speeches, over a 50 year period, nope.
Douglass is one of the most widely read person’s I have read. He was a slave. He never had any formal education. I have been been researching (he states learning to read was the key to freedom) the books he read (those he quotes from in his writings and speeches). He allowed his reading to enable him to grow as a human being. There are a couple thousand books in his library at his house in Washington DC. The diversity of this man’s reading is inspiring. Here are some examples,
The Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe;
Alexander von Humbolt,
Cosmos: A Sketch the Physical Universe;
Alexander Dumas;
Alfred Lord Tennyson;
Benjamin Disraeli;Cicero;
Homer;
Edward Gibbon;
Complete Works of William Loyd Garrison;
Biography of Abraham Lincoln;
Goethe;
Rousseau;
Complete Works of Walter Scott;
Thomas Carlyle;
Galileo;
The Bible;
etc, etc
His reading covers fiction, history, geography, science, astronomy, religion, and philosophy. Here is a picture of Douglass reading in his library. Reading changes the world because it changes YOU and ME. Reading will damage our narrowness, blindness and prejudice.
Of Related Interest
Frederick Douglass: Moral Compass of the Republican Party
Frederick Douglass: Most Photographed American of the 19th Century
Stories of Grace: Frederick Douglass Affirms the Humanity of a Slaveholder
James Earl Jones Read Frederick Douglass
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