| Speaker at Ventura College Ventura College Brings
Frederick Douglass and Professor Jake the Historian
February 9 to Library
VENTURA: As part of Ventura College’s tribute to African-American History Month, master storyteller Leslie Perry will join actor Lew Dauber on Saturday, February 9 in the Reading Room of the LRC to revisit Frederick Douglass’ July 5, 1852 speech to the Rochester N.Y. Women’s Anti-Slavery Society. Douglass explained to that audience what July 4 meant to an American slave: the difference between the ideals of the Constitution and the realities of the pre-Dred Scott existence of people of color in the United States.
Free to all who attend, Hearing Frederick Douglass is funded by a grant from the Living History Centre of Marin County and will begin at 8 pm. Contributions to support the Library are welcome. Refreshments will be served.
Leslie Perry has been telling his brand of stories since 1975 and has told all over the southern California area. He is a member of two storytelling groups, With Our Words, a storytelling collective and Tellers and Talkers, a black storytelling group. He is the recipient of the Leadership Award from the National Storytelling Network and is the co-director of the Los Angeles World Storytelling Festival. Leslie tells stories from many cultures and tells them with high energy and lots of audience participation. A CD of his stories, "Freedom Stories," is available.
Lew Dauber plays "Professor Jake the Historian" but if he continues portraying a professor, Lew Dauber may endanger his standing as an amateur scholar. Encountering great personalities from the past has become a passion for Lew, who has literally acted his way into serious academics. After his last show at Ventura College (Lincoln in the Library), he was so encouraged to further his studies by the many friends he made among the staff that he actually applied to graduate programs. To his surprise, he was accepted by Mount Saint Mary’s College in Los Angeles, and is well on his way to a Master of Arts in Humanities there. In addition, he received a grant from the Living History Center to develop his "two-method" approach of presenting history; that grant has made Hearing Frederick Douglass possible.
Lew continues his career in television and film as well, with recent roles on Back to You, The Bernie Mac Show, the Suite Life of Zach and Cody, the Island, and Something’s Gotta Give. He is seen perennially in the Christmas favorite Jingle All The Way. Establishing himself in television by suffering indigestion on Pepto-Bismol ads for several years, Lew is a veteran of hundreds of episodes and commercials over a twenty-five year acting career. He is known in the acting trade as a "familiar face." Long ago, he earned a degree in Dramatic Arts from U.C. Berkeley, and was a co-founder of the Magic Theater there.
For additional information, call Simon Waltzer, Department Chair of Language Arts and Chair of the Library Committee, Ventura College (805) 654-6400, ext. 1264.
WHY FREDERICK DOUGLASS?
Fellow-citizens! ... The existence of slavery in this country brands your republicanism as a sham, your humanity as a base pretence, and your Christianity as a lie. It destroys your moral power abroad; it corrupts your politicians at home. It saps the foundation of religion; it makes your name a hissing, and a by-word to a mocking earth. It is the antagonistic force in your government, the only thing that seriously disturbs and endangers your Union.
So said Frederick Douglass in 1852 on the day after Independence Day, to an abolitionist meeting at Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York. Born into slavery in 1818, Douglass had escaped to the North at age twenty and had become widely respected for his courage and intellect. He traveled throughout the northern states speaking about the meaning for America of slavery and its horrors. The bitter irony, on this occasion, of a black man being invited to celebrate the Fourth of July was not lost on him — and he made certain it would not be lost on his audience:
Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, asking me to speak to-day? What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless ... your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery ...
Douglass shows his audience what the story of America looks like when seen from the perspective of the American slave. His great gift was not only to make white Americans feel the monstrosity of slavery, but also to express to them, with great insight and sensitivity, the meaning of the idea of America itself. He understood America and embraced its ideals even as he expressed how far America had fallen short of those ideals. What is unusual in him is the juxtaposition of understanding and outrage. It is more common to find reason and rhetoric in service to emotional turmoil exclusively. What is so unusual about Douglass is that his mind is calm and reflective while his heart is angry and breaking. He is a man who feels, and speaks, with both his heart and mind. As a result, his judgment against America is far more penetrating than the all-consuming rage and resentment of the afflicted; and his appreciation of America is far more compelling than praise coming from those who are privileged and fortunate:
... Fellow Citizens, [the] signers of the Declaration of Independence were brave men. They were great men too — great enough to give fame to a great age. It does not often happen to a nation to raise, at one time, such a number of truly great men. The point from which I am compelled to view them is not, certainly, the most favorable ... and yet I cannot contemplate their great deeds with less than admiration. They were statesman, patriots and heroes, and for the good they did, and the principles they contended for, I will unite with you to honor their memory ... They were peace men ... but they did not shrink from agitating against oppression ... with them, nothing was "settled" that was not right. With them, justice, and liberty and humanity were "final"; not slavery and oppression. You may well cherish the memory of such men ... How unlike the politicians of an hour! Their statesmanship looked beyond the passing moment, and stretched away in strength into the distant future. They seized upon eternal principles, and set a glorious example in their defence. Mark them!
Douglass’ purpose is not to destroy America; rather, it is to inspire America to fulfill it promise. He speaks about the crimes of slavery, the sin of slavery. He speaks of things that are difficult and painful to speak of, that are difficult and painful to hear; he speaks of things demand of changes in the way we live. To an assemblage, to a community, his is the voice of a prophet. On a personal level, to an individual, his might be called the still, small voice within — the voice of conscience.
How to convey the power of his message today? How to tell his story to people living today? How to remember Frederick Douglass? Perhaps it would be helpful to visualize him as a presence. Witnesses and journalists of the times reported him to be a man of great physical presence and personal charisma, who spoke with a great, powerful voice. Perhaps we can imagine what the people in the audience must have felt as they watched and listen to him. He is, after all, a "negro" recounting America’s own history to them in ways that reminds them that they, too, rose up out of rebellion against man’s injustice to man.
Certain outstanding personalities become legend. Having played extraordinary roles in a nation’s history, they become, in a sense, mythological figures. They are too important to be confined exclusively to the period in with they actually lived. They come to represent national qualities and virtues that the people value and wish to emulate. As legends, they serve as heroes and heroines, in the ancient sense of those words; they serve as demi-gods. They can inspire and encourage and guide a people in times of crisis. They have the power to bind people together and bring unity; unity under a goal and a vision that are stronger and deeper than all personal, short-term goals. Such a personality is Frederick Douglass. He was, and is, the voice of America’s conscience. America was once a great idea. America was once the hope of the world, the last great hope. It may be again, if we can reinvigorate it, if we can hear the large and commanding voice of America’s great ideal.
Frederick Douglass needs to be heard today; he needs to be remembered.
By Lew Dauber, Nov. 2007
REFERENCES
... Frederick Douglass, What to the slave is the fourth of July? An address delivered in Rochester, New York, on 5 July 1852, in John W. Blassingame and John R.McKivigan, eds., The Frederick Douglass Papers, series 1, Speeches, Debates, and Interviews, vol.2, 1847-54; Yale University Press; New Haven; 1982#####
|
