I recently flew round trip from San Jose to Rochester, New York after my mother-in-law passed away.

Flying from west to east, there was a powerful tailwind. The flight time was reduced by about an hour.

Flying from east to west, there was a powerful headwind. The flight time was increased by about an hour.

At the Rochester airport, I saw a large sign with its official name: “The Frederick Douglass Greater Rochester International Airport”.

As you may know, Frederick Douglass escaped slavery and settled In Rochester where he became a leader of the Abolitionists. (Please read the chapters “Frederick Douglass and Harriett Beecher Stowe”, “Fort Sumter,” “Abraham Lincoln versus Robert E. Lee”, and “The Election of 1876” in my book Visions of America, at pages 61-66; 80-82; 93-95; and 105-109.)

As my plane plowed back to San Jose through headwinds and turbulence, my thoughts turned to the headwinds and turbulence that Frederick Douglass plowed through in his struggle to end slavery and to insist on securing the rights to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness for all Americans.

In my book. Visions of America, I explain the headwinds that Frederick Douglass faced growing up as a slave who was forbidden to read:

His thirst for freedom turned into a thirst for education.

He learned the first steps of reading from a kind mistress who was not used to the ways of slavery.

When her husband found out what she was doing, he rebuked her. He warned her that if you teach a slave to read “there would be no keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave.”

As Frederick Douglass remembered years later: “These words sank deep into my heart . . . and called into existence an entirely new train of thought.” He now understood “the white man’s power to enslave the black man.” Whites kept the blacks uneducated!

Therefore, as a child, Frederick Douglass “set out with high hope, and a fixed purpose, at whatever cost of trouble, to learn how to read.”

His struggles to learn to read and write far-exceeded the oft-described struggles of Abraham Lincoln. Growing up at roughly the same time, Abraham Lincoln’s problem was that there weren’t many books to read on the frontier. So we inspire school children with tales about how young Abe walked miles to borrow books to read beneath the flickering flame of the fireplace.

In contrast, it was illegal for Frederick Douglass to learn to read or write. The slave-owners, including Frederick Douglass’s master, well knew that they could only keep the blacks down if they kept the blacks uneducated.

Nevertheless, Frederick Douglass persevered. He learned by using the discarded homework of his master’s son. He tricked the neighborhood children into revealing how to write. He snuck around reading everything he could lay his hands on.

Despite his many disadvantages, Frederick Douglass became a great writer, as well as a dynamic orator.

Unfortunately, Frederick Douglass continued to face headwinds and turbulence.

One major headwind was the eagerness of white people to compromise their differences by sacrificing the freedom of black people. (See the chapter “Abraham Lincoln versus Stephen Douglas” in my book Visions of America, at pages 71-74).

Indeed, even Abraham Lincoln considered a compromise to save the Union in 1861 after the Confederacy had been hatched by the secession of a number of slave states. This compromise among white men would have amended the Constitution of the United States to guarantee the continued existence of slavery in the South forever!

As I wrote in Visions of America (at pages 80-82):

No wonder Frederick Douglass despaired.

Again and again in American history, whites in the North and the South had compromised their differences by sacrificing the liberty of blacks.

In 1787, at the Constitutional Convention, whites compromised their differences by permitting the slave trade to continue for at least another 20 years.

In 1820, whites compromised by permitting the South to add new slave states and by promising the North that slavery (and cheap black labor) wouldn’t spread to the North.

In 1850, whites compromised by agreeing that the North would increase its efforts to return runaway slaves to their masters in the South.

Now, in 1861, it looked as if whites in the North might compromise to preserve the Union by adopting a constitutional amendment that would guarantee that slavery could exist forever in the South.

How would the new President respond?

As a practical politician, Lincoln was willing to compromise any issues except “the extension of slavery into the national territories”—not because Lincoln was worried about the effect of extending slavery on black people—but because Lincoln feared that a compromise on extending slavery into the national territories “would disrupt the party that had elected him.” . . . .

Weary with such betrayals of his people, Frederick Douglass lost hope.

“Disappointed by Lincoln’s Inaugural Address, alarmed by public persecution, he fear[ed] for his people. For the first time in twenty years, he [lost] faith in the American Dream.”

Wondering whether blacks would be better off fleeing America, Douglass chartered a boat to investigate Haiti as a possible haven.

Then the South made a fatal mistake. Hotheads in South Carolina didn’t merely want Fort Sumter to be abandoned because it ran out of food. They wanted to take credit for forcing Fort Sumter to surrender.

These shortsighted fools did not see the bloodshed of war. They were too blinded by delusions of glory.

These deaf prophets did not hear the weeping that comes from needless death and suffering. They were too deafened by talk of glory.

These wicked men did not understand that starting a war would enable Lincoln to do something he could never have done in peacetime: free the slaves.

And so, “[a]t 4:30 in the morning of April 12 a single mortar sounded, and a red ball ascended in a lazy curve to burst over the fort.” “All day and into the rainy night the encircling batteries pounded at the fort” and its Star-Spangled Banner.

After a bombardment that lasted thirty-four hours, Fort Sumter surrendered.

In the South, people cheered.

But in the North—in the “Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave”—people rose in fury at the traitors who dared to fire on the Star-Spangled Banner. . . . .

Frederick Douglass didn’t go to Haiti. Instead, he shouted, “God be praised!”

Frederick Douglass didn’t praise God because he liked war.

Frederick Douglass rejoiced because he saw that war would bring liberty for his people.

Frederick Douglass rejoiced because he heard God’s truth marching on.

Frederick Douglass rejoiced because he understood that the Union could only be saved by granting liberty to those Americans who had come from Africa.

Frederick Douglass rejoiced because he understood that Liberty and Union truly were one and inseparable, then and forever.

Unfortunately, even after the end of slavery, Frederick Douglass continued to face headwinds and turbulence.

Racism and prejudice were not ended by the bullets of the Civil War.

Indeed, in a compromise between North and South to resolve the deadlocked presidential election of 1876, the big loser became African-Americans.

We have seen that, prior to the Civil War, whites had compromised several times to preserve the Union at the expense of black people who were left to suffer in slavery. . . . .

The essence of the Compromise after the election of 1876 was that, in exchange for the Republican candidate becoming the next President, the Union Army would be withdrawn from all Southern states and the North would stop interfering with the “internal affairs” of the South.

Once again, the big losers in the Compromise were African-Americans, who were essentially re-enslaved. Economically, they were tied to their former masters by debts and customs. Segregation of the races was enforced by the terror of the Ku Klux Klan and the power of new “Jim Crow” laws.

How could this happen? Why did the North turn its back on African-Americans?

The North’s abandonment and betrayal of the freed slaves is much easier to understand if you remember that the North did not begin the Civil War in order to free the slaves.

The North began the Civil War in order to save the Union after the rebels dared to fire upon the Star-Spangled Banner at Fort Sumter. It was only as a last resort to help win the resulting civil war that Lincoln mustered the personal courage and the political strength to free the South’s slaves.

Furthermore, virtually no whites believed in racial equality.

Although many northern whites thought that slavery was wrong, this did not change their ingrained racist certainty that whites were superior to blacks.

Writing in 1855, Frederick Douglass noted the “American prejudice against color” and described how he “found this prejudice very strong and very annoying” when he traveled in New England.

Indeed, Douglass found that “[t]he abolitionists themselves were not entirely free from [such racial prejudice, although he] could see they were struggling mightily against it.”

When they were children, they “had all been educated to believe that if they were bad, the old black man—not the old devil—would get them . . .”

Thus, even the noblest abolitionists found it hard to get the better of their fears. For example, they betrayed their ingrained racial fears when they would say to him, “Mr. Douglass, I will walk to meeting with you; I am not afraid of a black man.”

Abraham Lincoln was not an abolitionist and he shared the racist preconceptions of his age about blacks being inferior to whites. When pressed for a solution about what to do about freed slaves, he deluded himself with fantastic schemes about sending the blacks back to Africa.

White fantasies about sending the blacks back to Africa betrayed the same old white habit of not seeing the problems of racism, not hearing the problems of racism, and not understanding the problems of racism.

This blog has become unusually long.

But perhaps its length is fitting given the persistence of headwinds and turbulence in the struggle against slavery and racism.

I considered turning this blog into three blogs, to make it more digestible.

But then, I thought we need to read about the headwinds and turbulence as a whole. Because this is one of those times when the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Frederick Douglass didn’t just face one type of headwind and turbulence.

He didn’t just struggle against the whites denying education to blacks.

He didn’t just struggle against the whites striking self-serving compromises at the expense of blacks.

He didn’t just struggle against racism.

He struggled against all these headwinds and all this turbulence working together and reinforcing their effects against him in a gigantic “hurricane” that he “flew through” for his entire life.

And yet, Frederick Douglass kept the faith.

Frederick Douglass kept his faith that God’s truth will keep marching on until it overcomes so much ignorance, so many compromises with evil, and so much racism.

QUESTIONS TO THINK ABOUT

Why did so many people in the time of Frederick Douglass refuse to see, hear and understand the evils resulting from slavery and racism?

Why do so many people today refuse to see, hear and understand the evils resulting from past and present racism—including from systems of laws and customs that amplify the evils of racism?

READ MORE

For related thoughts, please read my blogs “Spilling Coffee”, “Individuals and Systems, Now and Forever, One and Inseparable”, “Alcatraz: Imprisoned by the Powers of Kingdoms, Money and Religion”, “Alcatraz: Escaping by Using ‘Countervailing Powers’ Wisely”, “Racism Is America Gone Astray”, and “The 500-Year Marathon To Overcome Racism”.