David W. Blight discusses his book, "Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom", at Politics and Prose on 10/29/18.
Blight, the award-winning author of histories including American Oracle and Race and Reunion, is perhaps the foremost Frederick Douglass scholar at work today. He’s edited the annotated editions of Douglass’s first two autobiographies, and he draws on this close work and on newly discovered issues of Douglass’s newspapers and other documents for this definitive biography. An escaped slave, Douglass (1818-1895) became a leading abolitionist, an outstanding orator, and one of the most prominent literary figures of his time. Blight looks in detail at Douglass’s speeches and examines his complicated views of a country he both loved and severely criticized. He follows Douglass on his overseas lecture tours and illuminates the complicated thinking behind the three versions of Douglass’s autobiography. He also discusses Douglass’s two marriages, his relationships with members of his extended family, and parses his religious beliefs.
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David W. Blight is Class of 1954 Professor of American History and Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University. He is the author or editor of a dozen books, including American Oracle: The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era; and Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory; and annotated editions of Douglass’s first two autobiographies. He has worked on Douglass much of his professional life, and been awarded the Bancroft Prize, the Abraham Lincoln Prize, and the Frederick Douglass Prize, among others.
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