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Pragmatic Obots Unite

Pragmatic Obots Unite

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Wednesday Evening Thread: “And when you get on, he’ll leave yo’ ass for a white girl” Frederick Douglass – Hotep or Hero?

July 10, 2019 by Miranda 120 Comments

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(h/t lamh)

Hmmmmm………I’m just asking, that’s all.

From Blackpast.org: Anna Murray Douglass is best known as the first wife of Frederick Douglass.

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Her life illustrates the challenges facing women who were married to famous men.  Born as a free black in rural Maryland, her parents, Mary and Bambarra Murray, were manumitted shortly before her birth. She grew up in Baltimore, where she met a ship caulker six years her junior, Frederick Washington Bailey.

Although it is unclear how they met, Murray facilitated his second escape attempt by providing money for a train ticket and a sailor’s disguise.  She followed him to New York City, where they were married by the prominent black minister, Rev. J.W.C. Pennington.  They adopted the surname Douglass when they moved to a Quaker community in New Bedford, Massachusetts.

While Frederick began his climb as an abolitionist orator, Anna cared for their children, born between 1839 and 1849: Rosetta, Lewis, Frederick, Charles, and Annie. In 1847, they moved to Rochester, New York, where Frederick began publishing his newspaper, the North Star.  The gulf between Anna and Frederick widened over the years; she could barely read and write and was rarely a part of his activist life and growing circle of prominent white and black abolitionist colleagues.

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Frederick also had a 28-year affair with a German journalist named Ottilie Assing. The daughter of one of Germany’s most prominent families, Ottilie arranged to translate his memoir, ‘’My Bondage and My Freedom”. She lived in the Douglass family home for 22 summers until the relationship ended. Douglass refused to leave his wife Anna Murray and Ottilie returned home disillusioned.

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After Douglass’ first wife, Anna Murray Douglass, died on August 4, 1882, he married Helen Pitts, a young abolitionist clerk about 18 months later.

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