Peacham Library
February 19, 7:00 pm, Frederick Douglass

Peacham resident Julie Hansen, Director of Thaddeus Stevens School, will share the life of Fredrick Douglass in the broader context of a life devoted to establishing the equality for African Americans as well for women. She recently attended a week-log seminar at Yale under the direction of the David Blight and the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition. Blight is the leading authority on Frederick Douglass and his most recent book, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom, examines not only Douglass as an historic persona, but also as a representative of our nation's most fundamental beliefs about the nature of humanity and liberty.
Frederick Douglass was the most photographed American of the nineteenth century. Having "mastered the language of the master" he wrote the first African American fiction, three autobiographies, thousands of editorials. He gave over 2,000 speeches, first denouncing the evils of slavery and later working toward full emancipation of the African American.
She will look at his early travels in Great Britain, his complex relationships with William Lloyd Garrison and John Brown, the women in his sphere of influence, and his fearless, life-long pursuit of freedom and equality.