Frederick Douglass /Unidentified Artist, Former attribution: Elisha Livermore Hammond (1779 - 1882) / c. 1845, Oil on canvas / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
June 16, 2023 - April 21, 2024
Frederick Douglass (1818–1895), the preeminent African American voice of the nineteenth century, is remembered as one of the nation’s greatest orators, writers, and picture makers. Born on the Eastern Shore of Maryland in 1818, Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey was the son of Harriet Bailey, an enslaved woman, and an unknown white father. He escaped bondage in 1838 and changed his surname to Douglass.
Over six decades, Douglass published three autobiographies, hundreds of essays, and a novella; delivered thousands of speeches; and edited the longest-running Black newspaper in the nineteenth century, The North Star (later Frederick Douglass’ Paper and Douglass’ Monthly). During the Civil War, he befriended and advised President Abraham Lincoln and met every subsequent president through Grover Cleveland. He was also the first African American to receive a federal appointment requiring Senate approval (U.S. Marshal of the District of Columbia).
Douglass became the most photographed American of the nineteenth century and remains a public face of the nation. As an art critic, he wrote extensively on portrait photography and understood its power. He explained how this “true art” (as opposed to pernicious caricatures) captured the essential humanity of each subject. True art was an engine of social change, he argued, and true artists were activists: “They see what ought to be by the reflection of what is, and endeavor to remove the contradiction."
Curatorial Statement
Organized into seven sections, this exhibition highlights the long arc and significance of Frederick Douglass’s life: from slave and fugitive to internationally acclaimed abolitionist, women’s rights activist, and statesman after the Civil War. We come to recognize his influences in the Civil War and postwar eras; and the significance of his afterlife, in which his portraits and writings continue to inspire people to seek “all rights for all,” one of his mottos. The range of objects shown here reflects Douglass’s openness to new forms of media and technology to advance the cause of human rights.
—John Stauffer, the Sumner R. and Marshall S. Kates Professor of
English and of African and African American Studies, Harvard University
One Life Gallery | Second floor
"Frederick Douglass: 1817–1895"
a poem by Langston Hughes, from The Panther and the Lash, June 12, 1967
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IMAGE GALLERY
Aaron Anthony LedgerFrederick Augustus Washington Bailey was born into slavery on Edward Lloyd V’s Wye plantation in Talbot County, Maryland. Lloyd, a U.S. congressman and Maryland governor, enslaved more than five hundred people on ten thousand acres. Aaron Anthony managed the plantation where Douglass’s entry in the ledger reads, “Frederick Augustus, son of Harriet, Feby. 1818.”“Augustus” probably came from his Uncle Augustus, Harriet’s brother. After escaping bondage, he changed his name to Frederick Douglass. He never knew who his father was, but he suspected Anthony or Anthony’s sonin-law, Thomas Auld. He estimated 1817 as his birth year, which became standard until 1980, after the biographer Dickson Preston discovered the ledger.Bound ledger volume, 1700s and 1800sMary A. Dodge Collection, Maryland State Archives
Frederick DouglassIn September 1838, Douglass escaped enslavement, married Anna Murray, and moved to New Bedford, Massachusetts, a whaling hub. Three years later, after being hired as a speaker for the American AntiSlavery Society, he moved his family to Lynn, near Boston, where he befriended the Hutchinson Family Singers, who created popular antislavery songs.This sheet music cover of “The Fugitive’s Song” transforms the broadsides typically used to advertise “fugitives” into a tribute that recognizes Douglass for his “fearless advocacy, signal ability and wonderful success in behalf of his brothers in bonds.”The image depicts Douglass fleeing barefoot and pointing at a signpost for New England. (He escaped by train and boat.) Douglass publicly thanked the Hutchinson Family for their music: “You have sung the yokes from the necks and the fetters from the limbs of my race.” The composer, Jesse Hutchinson, sang “The Fugitive’s Song,” at Douglass’s funeral in 1895.E. W. Bouvé Lithography Co.Published by Henry PrentissLithograph, 1845National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Anna Murray Douglass c. 1813–1882Anna Murray, Douglass’s wife of forty-four years, was born in Caroline County, Maryland, about three miles from Douglass’s birthplace on the Eastern Shore. The two families knew one another, and the couple probably met in Baltimore, at the Sharp Street AME Church or at a debating and social society they frequented.Murray was the seventh of twelve children and the first to be born free, following the manumission of her mother. Around 1830, she moved to Baltimore, where she worked as a housekeeper.After becoming engaged to Douglass, Murray helped him escape, selling a feather bed to support his journey north. They were married in New York City on September 15, 1838, by the Reverend James W. C. Pennington. With Frederick Douglass almost always working, Anna Murray Douglass raised their five children: Rosetta, Lewis, Frederick Jr., Charles, and Annie.Unidentified photographerReproduction of undated photographCourtesy of the National Park Service, Museum Management Program and Frederick Douglass National Historic Site.Photo: Carol M. Highsmith
Oration Delivered in Corinthian Hall, Rochester (“What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?”)Douglass gave his celebrated “Fourth of July” oration near his home in Rochester, New York, in 1852. He delivered the speech following a two-year stay in the British Isles, where friends purchased his freedom.Employing a “double reversal,” Douglass began by comforting his mostly white audience but soon shifted his tone: “What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence?” For the next hour, he dramatized the national sins of slavery and racism before circling back:“I leave off where I began, with hope.” The speech is a jeremiad, a song of lament that seeks to restore the ideals of the nation’s founders.“I leave off where I began, with hope.” The speech is a jeremiad, a song of lament that seeks to restore the ideals of the nation’s founders.Frederick DouglassPamphlet, 1852The University of Rochester; Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries
My Bondage and My FreedomDouglass published his second autobiography in 1855, amid escalating violence in Kansas. It sold some 15,000 copies in the first two months of publication, with one reviewer praising Douglass as “a genius.” Following the release of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845), the author had become a penetrating intellectual and revolutionary, one willing to accept violence to destroy the violence of slavery.The artist John Chester Buttre (1821–1893) based this engraving on a daguerreotype (now lost) that depicts Douglass staring into the lens, with hands clenched as though ready for a fight. The portrait embodies a stance affirmed throughout the book—one of artful defiance or majestic wrath.Frederick DouglassAnti-Slavery Office, Boston, 1855Collection of John Stauffer
James McCune Smith 1813–1865Born into slavery in New York City, James McCune Smith was the first African American to receive a medical degree (University of Glasgow). He ran an interracial medical practice on Broadway and was the chief physician of New York City’s Colored Orphan Asylum. In 1855, Smith helped found, with Douglass and Gerrit Smith, the Radical Abolition Party, which advocated freedom and full suffrage for all adults.Smith penned the introduction to Douglass’s second autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom, where he refers to him as “a burning and shining light.” Douglass reciprocated: “No man in this country more thoroughly understands the whole struggle between freedom and slavery than does Dr. Smith, and his heart is as broad as his understanding.”Johnson, Williams &. Co. (active 1860s and 1870s)Albumen silver print, c. 1860Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division; The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations
Representative WomenThis portrait unites seven leading female suffragists. Clockwise from the top are portraits of Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Mary Livermore, Lydia Maria Child, Susan B. Anthony, and Sara Jane Lippincott, who surround Anna Dickinson, the most popular woman on the lecture circuit; in a sense, Douglass’s counterpart. The visual power of the image stems from its ability to reveal both the cohesiveness of the movement and the strong personalities within it.Douglass knew these women and, as a leading male advocate for women’s rights, often collaborated with them and attended their conventions. But when Congress passed the Fifteenth Amendment in 1869, granting suffrage to Black men but not to women, their cohesion crumbled. Anthony and Stanton argued that white women should have suffrage before Black men. Douglass supported the amendment but continued to advocate for women’s suffrage.L. Schamer (active c. 1870)Louis Prang Lithography Co. (active 1856–1899)Lithograph, 1870National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Sojourner Truth c. 1797–1883Sojourner Truth was possibly more famous for her carte-de-visite photographs than for her actual presence at abolition meetings. Her carefully chosen images made her a familiar figure to millions of viewers. They depicted a respectable matron. Truth’s famous maxim that she included with her portrait, “I sell the shadow to support the substance,” links her image (shadow) to her actual self (substance) and to the growing demand for photographs during the war years.Truth’s image becomes an extension of herself and her nation. The yarn forms the contours of the eastern United States, with Florida’s panhandle and Texas clearly visible. As a representative American woman, Truth’s piety, simplicity, and abolitionism were shaping the United States.Unidentified photographerAlbumen silver print, 1864National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Gerrit Smith 1797–1874Gerrit Smith, the upstate New York abolitionist and philanthropist, was a close friend of Douglass from the late 1840s to the Civil War. In 1846, Smith gave away 120,000 acres of land in the Adirondacks, known as “Timbuctoo,” to three thousand Black residents of New York State. Smith welcomed Douglass to New York with a deed for forty acres and provided crucial financial support to his newspaper. “You not only keep life in my paper but keep spirit in me,” Douglass wrote. Smith helped convert Douglass into a political abolitionist, one who interpreted the Constitution as an antislavery document.Ezra Greenleaf Weld (1801–1874)Two-thirds daguerreotype, c. 1854National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of an anonymous donor
Fugitive Slave Law Convention, Cazenovia, New YorkOn August 21, 1850, two days after the Senate passed the Fugitive Slave Act, about two thousand abolitionists convened near Gerrit Smith’s home. Douglass presided as president. Participants approved Smith’s “Letter to the American Slaves,” urging captives to avenge their enslavers. “You are prisoners of war in an enemy’s country,” Smith declared.Here, Douglass sits at the edge of the table next to Theodosia Gilbert, the fiancée of William Chaplin, who was in prison for aiding fugitives. Behind Douglass stands Gerrit Smith, in mid-speech, gesticulating. On either side of Smith, in checkered shawls and day bonnets, are Mary and Emily Edmonson, whose freedom had been orchestrated by Chaplin.Ezra Greenleaf Weld (1801–1874)Half-plate copy daguerreotype, 1850Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Set Charles Momjian
See Also
Frederick Douglass Facts Frederick DouglassWhen sitting for a photograph, Douglass would pose as an artist or performer, forming part of a pas de trois with the photographer and the camera. He always dressed up and, as the activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton noted, often appeared “majestic in his wrath.”Before the mid-1860s, Douglass typically stared into the camera lens with a dramatic look. He wanted the focus on himself. Here, he fills the frame, appearing as an accomplished, dignified activist, and projecting a visual voice of democracy. Through his images, voice, and writings, Douglass sought to “out-citizen” whites, many of whom questioned African American rights.Unidentified photographerSixth-plate daguerreotype, c. 1850 (after c. 1847 daguerreotype)National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Frederick DouglassIn this first known photographic image of Douglass, taken only one year after the first commercial daguerreotype studio opened in the United States, he appears somewhat dazed or “statue-like,” as he might have said. In 1841, the exposure time for a daguerreotype of this size could run up to fifteen seconds, depending on the time of day and the amount of available daylight in the daguerreotypist’s studio.Unidentified photographerSixth-plate daguerreotype, c. 1841Collection of Gregory French
John Brown 1800–1859One of the nation’s first African American daguerreotypists, Augustus Washington was also a prominent abolitionist in Hartford, Connecticut, when he made this portrait of the militant abolitionist John Brown. At the time, Brown was working to establish a “Subterranean Pass Way,” a network of armed men in the Alleghenies for conducting fugitives to freedom in Canada.In Washington’s daguerreotype, Brown apparently holds the Pass Way flag and pledges allegiance to his scheme, which never materialized. In 1853, Washington and his family emigrated to Liberia, the former West African colony founded by the American Colonization Society, which gained independence in 1847.Augustus Washington (c. 1820–1875)Quarter-plate daguerreotype, c. 1846–47National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; purchased with major acquisition funds and with funds donated by Betty Adler Schermer in honor of her greatgrandfather, August M. Bondi
J. P. Ball Salon, 1867 (Lessons of the Hour)J. P. Ball Salon, 1867 is a photograph from Isaac Julien’s Lessons of the Hour, a ten-screen film installation on Douglass’s life and times in relation to our own. The title “Lessons of the Hour” refers to Douglass’s 1894 anti-lynching speech, in which he declared that most whites had “no respect” for “the life of the negro.”James Presley Ball, whose Cincinnati studio was known as the “Great Daguerreian Gallery of the West,” photographed Douglass in 1867 and produced two cartes de visite for him. According to Gleason’s Pictorial, a leading art journal, Ball photographed “with an accuracy and a softness of expression unsurpassed by any establishment in the Union.” The journal also praised Ball’s gallery: walls bordered with gold leaf; paintings from the African American Robert Duncanson, who worked in the studio; and sculptures of goddesses.Julien reimagines Ball’s gallery: Actors portray Douglass and his friend and business partner Julia Griffiths, as they examine photographs in the gilded, inspiring salon.Isaac Julien (born 1960)Gloss inkjet paper mounted on aluminum, 2019Courtesy of the artist and Victoria Miro
Harriet Tubman 1820–1913Harriet Tubman was a close ally of Douglass. They both sought immediate abolition and equal rights and played important roles in the Civil War—Tubman as a nurse and spy for the Union army and Douglass as a recruiter, presidential advisor, orator, and essayist. They also helped hundreds of fugitives to freedom.John Darby’s woodcut engraving was the frontispiece to Sarah Bradford’s 1869 biography, Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman, and evokes Tubman’s service as a spy. In 1899, Tubman petitioned Congress for a military pension; she received a widow’s pension for her husband’s Civil War service but nothing for her own.John G. Darby (active 1830s–1860s)Wood engraving, c. 1868National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Frederick DouglassDouglass’s visual persona continually evolved, which undermined one of the key intellectual foundations of chattel slavery and racism that cast the self as fixed, unable to rise. Perhaps the most noticeable markers of Douglass’s continual evolution are his hairstyle and facial hair. In this salted paper print, he experiments with a mid-scalp part, unique among the 168 separate photographs. Five years later, in a carte de visite, he sports a ponytail, also distinct from his typical hairstyle.Unidentified photographerSalted paper print, c. 1860National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
John Brown 1800–1859Douglass described John Brown as someone who, “though a white gentleman, is in sympathy a black man, and as deeply interested in our cause, as though his own soul had been pierced with the iron of slavery.” They became friends, and in 1859, Brown urged Douglass to join him in raiding the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry. Douglass, however, refused and told Brown he thought he was entering a “steel trap.” Brown and sixteen others were killed, either during the raid or after they were found guilty of treason. Douglass later credited Brown with starting the war that ended slavery.Unidentified photographerSalted paper print, c. 1857 (after c. 1855 daguerreotype)National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Frederick DouglassDouglass likely sat for this photograph by John White Hurn on January 14, 1862, when he spoke at National Hall in Philadelphia, a block from Hurn’s studio. Hurn photographed Douglass again in 1866 and 1873, for a total of nine extant photographs, the most of any Douglass photographer.Hurn was also a telegraph operator and aided Douglass’s 1859 escape after news broke of John Brown’s capture at Harpers Ferry. Douglass had arrived in Philadelphia on October 17, a day after Brown launched his attack, and Hurn refused to deliver a telegram ordering Philadelphia’s sheriff to arrest Douglass as a conspirator in Brown’s raid. Hurn also warned Douglass about the situation and prompted him to flee by train to Rochester, New York, and then to Canada and England.John W. Hurn (1823–1887)Albumen silver print, 1862Collection of Gregory French
Men of Color to ArmsAfter President Lincoln’s final Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, which called for enlisting Black men into the Union army, Douglass became a zealous recruiter, traveling throughout the northern states. He wrote the script for this broadside, which was mass produced in many sizes: ”MEN OF COLOR! TO ARMS! TO ARMS! NOW OR NEVER.” Winning the war depended upon arming Black men, as Douglass and many others recognized. His youngest son, Charles, was the first to enlist in the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, soon followed by his eldest son, Lewis.Unidentified artistPrinted broadside, 1863The Library Company of Philadelphia
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by HimselfDuring his first six years of freedom, Douglass steeped himself in authors ranging from Byron and Shakespeare to Emerson and Milton, along with the King James Bible. Increasingly, audiences began accusing him of never having been enslaved. And so, he “threw caution to the wind,” as he said, and wrote his life story, exposing the inhumanity of slaveholders and naming names from Maryland’s Eastern Shore.Published in May 1845, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass became an international bestseller. One reviewer called it “the most thrilling work which the American press ever issued—and the most important.”Frederick DouglassAnti-Slavery Office, Boston, 1845Collection of Jeffrey Coopersmith
Frederick DouglassThis painting was likely based on the engraved frontispiece of Douglass’s first autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845). The book included introductions by the Bostonians William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips, who were two of the nation’s leading white abolitionists.Unidentified artist (formerly attributed to Elisha Livermore Hammond)Oil on canvas, c. 1845National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Abraham Lincoln 1809–1865On January 8, 1864, when President Lincoln sat for Mathew Brady, he understood the power of a photograph; one by Brady had helped elect him in 1860. This image seems to have been inspired by Douglass, who had met Lincoln at the White House in August 1863. Lincoln appears well dressed and looks into the camera lens rather than away from it, as he usually did. He confronts the viewer with a look of firmness, if not resolve.The war was going badly, and Lincoln feared losing reelection. With the massive death toll and their opposition to the Emancipation Proclamation, “peace Democrats,” also known as “Copperheads,” threatened Lincoln’s reelection. They wanted an end to the war with slavery intact.Mathew B. Brady (c. 1823–1896)Albumen silver print, 1864National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Letter from Douglass to LincolnDouglass’s second meeting with President Lincoln at the White House, on August 19, 1864, was by invitation. Lincoln feared losing reelection and the war, and he believed Douglass could help.Lincoln asked Douglass to organize a band of Black scouts “to go into the rebel states . . . carry the news of emancipation, and urge the slaves to come within our boundaries.” On August 29, 1864, Douglass sent his proposal, which called for a general agent (probably himself as a commissioned officer) and sub-agents to conduct “squads of slaves” northward. Douglass also encouraged collaboration between Union generals and sub-agents, and requested food and shelter for freedmen involved in the scheme. Four days later, the Union army took Atlanta, greatly improving the chances of Lincoln’s reelection.Frederick DouglassInk on paper, August 29, 1864Abraham Lincoln Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C
Frederick DouglassWhen twenty-year-old Eva Webster Russell made a charcoal drawing of Douglass in early 1877, she was already a well-known Chicago artist and a member of the National Academy of Design. He was stopping in her city as part of a speaking tour and found time to sit for a portrait. Russell finished the drawing that May and wrote Douglass shortly thereafter to arrange for its shipping and negotiate its price. In their correspondence, which continued into the 1880s and 1890s, she refers to Douglass as “Uncle.” Their feeling of kinship was likely rooted in their connection to Martha Greene, an abolitionist comrade whose son, like Douglass’s, had been wounded in the war.Eva Webster Russell (1856–1914)Reproduction of charcoal drawing from 1877Courtesy of the National Park Service, Museum Management Program and Frederick Douglass National Historic Site. Photo: Carol M. Highsmith
Frederick DouglassIn September 1873, Douglass traveled to Nashville to speak at the third annual fair of the Tennessee Colored Agricultural Association. During his visit, he sat for Carl Giers (1828–1877), a local German American photographer. An unknown artist used Giers’s photograph to create an engraving for Harper’s Monthly in 1875, and in 1883, another unknown artist made an engraving from Giers’s photograph for the cover of Harper’s Weekly, among the nation’s leading illustrated papers.George William Curtis, the political editor of Harper’s, wrote the feature article accompanying this engraving. He deemed Douglass “one of the most interesting figures in the country,” adding that “no American career has had more remarkable and suggestive vicissitudes than his. . . . He is today, by his own energy and character and courage, an eminent citizen, and his life has been a constant and powerful plea for his people.”Unidentified artist, after Carl GiersWood engraving, 1883Harper’s Weekly cover, November 24, 1883National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Frederick Douglass 1818–1895Helen Pitts Douglass 1838–1903Anna Murray Douglass died from “paralysis” in August 1882 at Cedar Hill, the family home in Washington, D.C. (now the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site). Eighteen months later, Douglass married Helen Pitts, a radical activist and intellectual from western New York. Douglass hired Pitts when he was working as the Recorder of Deeds for the District of Columbia. She was white and twenty years his junior, which led to scandalmongering in the press and tension within his family.In 1884, the couple honeymooned in Niagara Falls, where this studio photograph was likely made.Unidentified photographerReproduction of albumen silver print from 1884Courtesy of Frederick Douglass National Historic Site
Frederick DouglassJohnson Marchant Mundy (1831–1897) was a well-known mid-nineteenth-century sculptor, who established an art school in Rochester, New York. When Douglass moved to Washington, D.C., in 1872, Rochester residents commissioned Mundy to create a bust. He visited Douglass in Washington and made a cast of his features, then produced two versions, one with a goatee and another with a full beard. A marble version of the full-bearded bust was unveiled in 1879 and placed on view at the University of Rochester. Another artist, C. Hess, made this plaster likeness with a full beard that Douglass kept for himself.C. Hess (life dates unknown), after Johnson Marchant MundyPlaster, 1880National Park Service, Frederick Douglass National Historic Site
Ida B. Wells-Barnett 1862–1931Born into slavery in Holly Springs, Mississippi, Ida B. Wells became one of the nation’s leading activists. In 1884, she filed a lawsuit against the Chesapeake, Ohio and Southwestern Railroad after being forcibly removed from the ladies’ car because she was Black. She won her case in Shelby County but lost the appeal in the Tennessee Supreme Court.Wells-Barnett devoted herself to civil rights, especially anti-lynching, and met Douglass in 1892. He became a mentor and friend and praised her pamphlet Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases. “There has been no word equal to it in convincing power,” Douglass wrote. Her life and writings remain an important influence on civil rights activists.Sallie E. Garrity (c. 1862–1907)Reproduction of albumen silver print from c. 1893National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Booker T. Washington 1856–1915Like most other African American leaders at the turn of the twentieth century, Booker T. Washington was inspired by Douglass’s life and writings, so much so that he published one of the first full biographies of Douglass in 1907. It is sympathetic but cursory. Most of it was ghostwritten, owing to Washington’s many other responsibilities.Washington was principal of Tuskegee Institute, a trade school in Alabama for Black students that offered photography as part of its curriculum. By accepting the racial doctrine of “separate but equal,” he managed to raise millions of dollars for the school. Some of Tuskegee’s prominent white, northern benefactors included the well-known philanthropists Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, as well as George Eastman, the founder of the Kodak camera and film that revolutionized photography.Elmer Chickering was a well-known photographer in Boston, who photographed politicians, actors, athletes, and other public figures.Elmer Chickering (1857–1915)Gelatin silver print, c. 1895National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
W.E.B. Du Bois 1868–1963When Douglass passed away on February 20, 1895, W.E.B. Du Bois was finishing his Harvard doctoral thesis, “The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States,” and had just accepted a faculty appointment at Wilberforce University in Ohio. He had heard Douglass speak, probably in Boston in late 1892. Douglass’s life and writings were a major inspiration for Du Bois, who would follow him to become one of the nation’s leading intellectuals and activists.At Douglass’s memorial service, Du Bois called him one of the nation’s greatest statesmen, owing to his ability to mold public opinion through words. He quoted Douglass as having said, “Character and not color should be the sole basis of all differences.”Cornelius Battey, who made this portrait, was one of the most prominent Black photographers of the period. He had also photographed Douglass in 1893, before becoming director of photography at Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University, in Alabama).Cornelius Marion Battey (1873–1927)Gelatin silver print, c. 1906National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; purchase funded in part by the photography acquisitions endowment established by the Joseph L. and Emily K. Gidwitz Memorial Foundation
Langston Hughes 1902–1967Langston Hughes, a leading voice of the Harlem Renaissance, was so inspired by Douglass’s life and writings that he wrote a poem about him. The verse “Frederick Douglass: 1817–1895” was first published in the December 1966 issue of Liberator Magazine, the successor of William Lloyd Garrison’s The Liberator, which had inspired Douglass. As Hughes recognizes in his poem, Douglass frequently quoted lines from Lord Byron’s “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage.”After photographing Hughes in Carmel, California, Edward Weston wrote him a brief note:Dear Langston Hughes, I have marked several [photographs] ‘E. W.’ These are my preference. We worked under difficulties—poor light—hurry—your weariness—nevertheless I think we achieved something. I am glad to have met you, heard you.Edward Weston (1886–1958)Gelatin silver print, 1932National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
